The idea for Matatu Pulse was born out of personal frustration. Our founder spent 45 minutes waiting at a stage in Kilimani on a Tuesday morning in 2022, watching packed matatus roll past while an empty one never came. There was no way to know whether to keep waiting, walk, or find an alternative. The information simply didn't exist.
That experience wasn't unusual — it was the daily reality for millions of Nairobi commuters. But what made it interesting as a problem was the solution's feasibility. GPS hardware was cheap. Mobile data infrastructure was good enough. The data, if collected, could be valuable to multiple stakeholders simultaneously.
The First Pilot
We started in 2023 with six vehicles from a single sacco partner on one route. We built the minimum viable tracking infrastructure, shipped a basic web interface, and watched whether riders actually changed their behaviour when given live information. They did — immediately and measurably.
Within three months we had 12 partner vehicles and a waiting list of saccos wanting to join. Within six months we had cleared 100 vehicles across three routes and raised a seed round from East African institutional investors who understood the scale of the opportunity.
Where We Are Now
Today Matatu Pulse tracks over 340 vehicles across 12 partner saccos, serving more than 60,000 daily active riders. We're the leading real-time matatu tracking platform in Nairobi, and we're building the data layer that will eventually make Kenya's entire informal transit network legible — to the people who ride it, the operators who run it, and the planners who shape it.