Popular online ride-sharing and ticketing platform Shohoz raised US$15 million pre-series B investment led by Singapore’s Golden Gate Ventures. It will use the fresh capital for customer acquisition and retention of its ride-sharing business, and expand into other on-demand services, the company introduced its investors at an event held at Pan Pacific Sonargaon in the capital and announced the launching of their car services.
Shohoz lets consumers share rides through cars and motorbikes for their daily commute, purchase bus and ferry tickets, and even get movie tickets from its website and smartphone app.
It aims to build a single platform that will provide the most convenient solution to help users solve their daily needs without any hassle. This ‘super-app’ will be designed to provide all major on-demand services including ride-sharing, bus tickets, movie tickets and more — all with a swipe on their smartphones.
“Shohoz means easy in Bengali. Our tagline is ‘Make life easy’. When we started in 2014, our vision was to serve the best to our customers. In 2014, we came up with tickets, added ride-sharing this year and are now executing on a grander ‘super-app’ strategy. To help Shohoz finance this growth, Shohoz has brought on board a great lineup of experienced international and regional investors, that I think will help us to achieve our feat very soon”, explains Maliha Quadir, founder and Managing Director of Shohoz.
“We’re honored to join Maliha and her team in their journey to grow Shohoz into the leading transportation and consumer platform in Bangladesh,” explains Justin Hall, Partner at Golden Gate Ventures.
“Today Bangladesh has all the indicators of a country poised for tremendous growth: increasing digitization of consumer services, rising consumer purchasing power, and an incredibly dense, urbanizing population. Shohoz is emerging at just the right time and place to completely dominate the consumer landscape in Bangladesh.”
“Shohoz has been successfully implementing innovative projects that are playing a big role in our Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s vision for a Digital Bangladesh. This investment comes at a time where the local tech startup scene is booming and we are seeing increased investor interest in our economy of 160 MN people and as such it’s a significant milestone for our local tech ecosystem”, said ICT state minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak, in his message to the Shohoz team.
“FDI in Bangladesh has tripled over last 3 years. This is the largest investment by a VC in Bangladesh to date, we are very excited to be welcoming our new investors and we wish Maliha and her team all the best” wrote Kazi M. Aminul Islam, Executive Chairman of Bangladesh Investment Development Authority, in his congratulatory message to Shohoz management.
The pre-series B investment comes amid Bangladesh’s emergence as the fastest growing economy in South Asia. The country has been experiencing a consistent YoY GDP growth of 7% for the last 20 years, and will soon be graduating into a middle-income country. Shohoz’s rapidly expanding team currently comprises of 200 veterans in tech, operations and marketing who are working hard to make life easier for the people of Bangladesh.
