South Africa has a new entrant in long-distance ride-sharing – and its founder is barely out of his teens.
Max Musgrave, a 21-year-old South African now living in France, has launched Woza Rides, a BlaBlaCar-style intercity car-pooling app aimed at students and budget-conscious travellers.
There’s one problem, though: it only runs on iPhone in a country where Android dominates the smartphone market. And so far, take-up has been slow. Still, Musgrave believes he is onto something big.
Musgrave grew up in South Africa and France, attending school in Pietermaritzburg before returning to Europe. A lifelong tinkerer – he grew up surrounded by Raspberry Pis, microcontrollers and a tech-savvy family – he eventually taught himself to code in earnest last year.
After spending the past northern hemisphere summer in San Francisco with friends building a start-up there, he was determined to “build something meaningful”.
The idea for Woza came from a simple frustration.
“I wondered how this doesn’t exist in South Africa,” he told TechCentral. “People rely on WhatsApp groups and Facebook groups to arrange rides. It’s chaotic, there’s no verification and it’s all cash based.”
Inspired by Europe’s successful BlaBlaCar platform, Musgrave built the first version of Woza in just three weeks.
Chicken-and-egg dilemma
The app launched a week ago. The biggest hurdle so far? “No one has posted a ride yet,” Musgrave admitted bluntly. Like all marketplace platforms, Woza faces the classic chicken-and-egg dilemma: riders won’t join without drivers posting trips, and drivers won’t post trips until riders appear.
He’s trying to seed early interest through university networks and lift-club groups on WhatsApp. A few dozen people have signed up, he said, but usage remains low.
Musgrave estimated the total addressable market at roughly US$80-million annually – comparable, he said, to Intercape’s South African bus business.
Woza Rides is, in his view, the country’s first fully formalised attempt at a long-distance car-pooling platform with:
- ID verification
- Integrated payments
- Automated pricing based on fuel cost, distance and average consumption
- Driver and passenger ratings
Drivers are not meant to profit; the model is strictly cost-sharing. Woza Rides takes 15% from the passenger side of each transaction. Payouts to drivers are held for two days to allow for complaints or other issues.
Safety is, of course, top of mind for South Africans. Musgrave initially built an emergency button into the app that alerted contacts and authorities. Testers told him it was unnecessary – most already share their location via WhatsApp or iPhone tracking – so he removed it.
For now, Woza Rides does not track the location of rides, both to save data and battery and to avoid spooking privacy-conscious users. He conceded that safety features will need to evolve as the platform grows.
One significant downside of the new service is that the app is currently only available for iOS, whereas the vast majority of South Africans use Android-based smartphones. An Android version will follow soon, he said.
Musgrave hopes to raise $250 000 in seed funding, which he said will give Woza Rides 12-18 months of runway and help fund a “relentless marketing push”.
He believes Woza Rides could become a national platform with fewer than 10 employees, given its relatively low capital intensity.
And while he knows competitors could easily undercut his model by arranging rides privately after meeting through the app, he shrugs this off.
“At this point, I’d be happy if that happened – it would mean people are using it.”
For now, Woza Rides is an ambitious idea with a young founder, a working prototype and a huge addressable market – but no traction yet.
Musgrave remains undeterred. “It sounds cheesy,” he says, “but this could change people’s lives.” — © 2025 NewsCentral Media
Get breaking news from TechCentral on WhatsApp. Sign up here.