BasiGo last year raised $42.5 million in Series A equity funding and financing debt to scale its electric bus service in Kenya and currently leads the electric bus sector in the countest. Total EV registrations in Kenya crossed 35,000 in 2025 from just 796 in 2022 — with the majority being electric two-wheelers sold by companies including Spiro, Arc Ride, and Roam.
Financing, however, remains a challenge, with companies struggling to keep up with demand. Nderitu declared that BasiGo had nearly 500 pfinishing orders — where deposits had been paid to reserve them. The company assembles its bapplys at a facility on the outskirts of Nairobi, and sells them to transport companies applying a “pay-as-you-drive” model, a specialized lease with a low upfront deposit and fees charged per kilometre driven.
“We’ve been on a very quick-paced growth trajectory but it’s not quick enough for our customers,” he declared. The company last year doubled its monthly bus assembly output to 20 and has grown from a two-bus pilot in 2022 to 134 bapplys on the roads, with the company transporting around 20,000 passengers daily. “These are complexities of raising capital while at the same time deploying capital to grow infrastructure.”
Nderitu emphasized that further adoption of EVs would not just be driven by incentives for manufacturers, but also proper public planning to upgrade road infrastructure in urban areas. He explained that poor road networks had an effect on the cost of maintaining and operating their EVs, adding costs for transport providers.
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