Case study: What Really Happened to WhereIsMyTransport?

One thing cities like Nairobi, Lagos, Jarkata, and Mumbai all have in common is that their public transit system is bound by "hustle." Hundreds of thousands of people ride in battered minibuses and tricycles that follow no schedule, swerve around potholes, and stop wherever someone shouts “Here” or “Owa” (in Yoruba). These vehicles, unlike those in Paris, London, or New York, do not have official maps, no apps, no predictability, just drivers who know the streets like the back of their hands. For years, this informal network has been ignored by the government and pretty much tech giants alike. Then Devin de Vries, a South African engineer, stepped in and turned the traffic into data.

From the Garage to the Global Stage

Devin did not originally set out to fix transit. He grew up in Cape Town, where inequality is visible in the split between car owners and those who hop into minibuses. After working in tech, he noticed a gap: cities in emerging countries had no digital tools to track their dominant form of transport.

In 2016, he cofounded WhereIsMyTransport to map transit and turn it into usable data for governments, riders, and startups. Investors loved it. The startup raised 1.5 million USD in seed funding by 2017, then 7.5 million in Series A round by 2020. By 2022, the total funding had topped 14.5 million already but apparently, it wasn’t enough.

The Strength that Begets the Bumpy Ride

For WhereIsMyTransport, their strength was in their niche, no one else tracked tricycle axis and minibus routes in these cities. They partnered with locals to ride and record routes and even use satellite tech. And while governments were excited about it, selling data to cash-strapped cities proved tricky and tough.

Nairobi might want a digital transit map, but not at the expense of fixing roads. The startup relied on grants and venture capital money that demanded rapid growth. So, they expanded to 40 cities across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In 2022, they had employed 140 full-time staff across 22 countries, supported by thousands of gig workers who rode buses and tracked routes. Their data reached tens of millions of transit users, but while it was smart to scale, each city required costly, boots-on-the-ground efforts. Hence, the burn rate skyrocketed, and the key question was, “Who would pay?”

The Headache with Collating Data

Collecting data in informal transit systems is tough, as routes change daily based on road closures, traffic, protests, or whatnot. The company sent staff to physically ride and record routes, which was accurate but slow. Tech solutions like crowdsourced data from riders were another hurdle. In many cities, smartphone ownership is quite low, you cannot crowdsource what people can't report.

Then, there was the challenge of convincing markets to care. In Europe, a startup might sell transit data to app developers at any time. However, in emerging countries, governments often have bigger priorities than digitizing bus routes. And the local tech communities? Well, they are busy building fintech and food delivery apps, not transit tools.

Competition seemed complicated

The startup didn't have direct competitors, as we cited in one of our articles about first-movers advantage, they were lucky to have entered the niche first as no one else was mapping Accra’s tro-tros or Lagos’ Danfos. But that’s part of the problem: when you are the only one shouting about an issue, people might nod politely or give you a pat on the back and then do absolutely nothing.

Meanwhile, bigger players like Google started dabbling into transit data for emerging markets, using their vast resources to their advantage. WhereIsMyTransport was just too niche to compete with these giants but also too ambitious to remain small.

When Cash Stopped Flowing

In 2023, WhereIsMyTransport halted operations after failing to secure a new funding round. Devin gave a candid farewell post where he acknowledged that:
“Sustainable impact requires ecosystems willing to pay for it. Governments and funders loved our work, but love doesn’t pay salaries." In our translation, “Love is never enough.”

The shutdown, as we have confirmed, wasn’t due to a lack of effort, the team had obviously navigated brutal challenges yet proved that informal transit could be mapped but couldn’t be monetized.

What’s Left Behind in this Tricky Industry

WhereIsMyTransport has shut down, but its data still helps cities plan better networks. There are also hard truths to learn, as we will continue to emphasize one case study at a time: solving real-world problems will always need customers who can pay, not the other way around.

1. You can't eat goodwill, startups need revenue models that match the urgency of their customers’ needs.
2. Scaling to 40+ cities looks great on a pitch deck, but without deep roots in each of those markets, you may be only scratching the surface.
3. Informal transit is human, fluid, and resistant, hence, an app can’t fix everything.

As Devin pointed out, “The problem remains, and someone will crack it, maybe with smarter tools and better timing.”

But as cities grow and chaos worsens, the question is whether the person who is brave enough to try this will learn from those who dared to chart this course previously and ran out of the road.