For Damilola Olokesusi, that frustration was not just an inconvenience. It was a problem waiting to be solved.
Today, the company she founded, Shuttlers, has grown from a small experiment built around WhatsApp messages and manual spreadsheets into one of Africa’s notable shared mobility platforms. The company has completed more than 10 million trips, raised over $5 million in funding, and become Nigeria’s first private shared mobility platform integrated into Google Transit.
But before Shuttlers became a recognised name in African mobility, Olokesusi was simply someone trying to understand why moving around Lagos had become so difficult.
A Young Woman Who Was Not Planning to Become an Entrepreneur
If anyone had met Olokesusi as a teenager, entrepreneurship would probably not have been the first thing they associated with her.
She did not grow up as the child who was always selling products, building small businesses or writing down startup ideas. Business ownership was not part of the environment she knew.
Her upbringing followed a more traditional definition of success. Her parents spent about 35 years working in civil service, where stability, steady income and retirement security represented the ideal career path.
Even her decision to study chemical engineering was influenced by expectations around Nigeria’s oil and gas industry. Like many young Nigerians, she was encouraged toward a profession believed to offer financial security.
However, a disruption during university changed the direction of her thinking.
At 19, a university strike interrupted her studies. She initially planned to use the period to learn technology, but the programme she wanted was too expensive. Instead, she enrolled in a leadership programme — a decision that would eventually reshape her understanding of purpose and impact.
The experience introduced her to a different way of looking at problems.
"I decided to make my life impactful. I thought entrepreneurship was the best way to truly make an impact, especially in Nigeria, where there are so many problems to solve. That was where the seed was sown, and from then on, I became hungry to find problems worth solving," Olokesusi said.
That mindset would later guide her toward one of Lagos’ biggest everyday challenges: transportation.
The Experiences That Inspired Shuttlers
The idea behind Shuttlers did not come from a single moment. Instead, it emerged from several experiences that gradually connected.
During an internship at an oil and gas company, Olokesusi noticed a sharp contrast between employees inside the organisation and commuters outside its gates.
Inside the company, staff buses arrived on schedule, picked up workers and transported them efficiently. Outside, Lagos commuters faced long waits, crowded buses and uncertainty.
She began questioning why organised transportation was available only as a workplace benefit for a small number of employees rather than a service accessible to more people.
The issue became even more personal because Lagos was not completely unfamiliar to her, but returning to the city after growing up in Ibadan exposed her to a different reality.
"Returning to Lagos to study at the University of Lagos was a culture shock. I still remember my first danfo ride. The shouting and the chaos terrified me," she recalled.
Like millions of Lagos residents, she eventually adapted. She learned how to navigate bus stops, identify reliable routes and understand the unwritten rules of public transportation.
But she never accepted that chaos should be normal.
"But I never believed that was how people should have to live," she said.
The situation became more serious when one of her sisters experienced a one-chance robbery — a crime where criminals disguise themselves as commercial transport operators to attack passengers.
Although her sister survived, the incident changed Olokesusi’s relationship with public transport.
"I had PTSD using public transport," she said.
Another experience came during a trip to Dubai, where she encountered the city’s organised metro system.
Watching people move around efficiently and confidently showed her that transportation could be designed differently.
"I was amazed because some of the things I'd only seen in movies turned out not to be science fiction. Seeing an underground train emerge to the surface completely blew my mind," she said.
When she returned to Nigeria, she decided that if she had to commute in Lagos, she wanted to create a transport service she would personally trust.
Starting With Two Buses and a Big Idea
The concept behind Shuttlers was straightforward: commuters should know when their bus would arrive, reserve seats before leaving home, travel through predictable routes and avoid the uncertainty associated with traditional transportation.
But turning that idea into reality was much harder.
"We officially launched Shuttlers in 2016, but our first pilot happened in 2015. We didn't own any vehicles, so we simply hailed cabs through ride-hailing platforms and approached the drivers. We'd tell them, 'We have a month-long gig for you.' That's how we got our first fleet," she said.
The first customers were people within her personal network.
"Our first customers were my friends who worked at a startup called Generation Enterprise. They were building a young company themselves, so they were willing to give us a chance."
Initially, the model worked. But as more people joined from different parts of Lagos, the complexity increased. Different locations meant more routes, more coordination challenges and higher operating costs.
Eventually, the company ran into financial difficulties.
"After about a month, we ran out of money. It felt like the service wasn't going to work. We had started as three female co-founders, but one of them decided to return to the United States before we had even fully launched. I went back to the drawing board. I attended every training I could," she explained.
Instead of abandoning the idea, Olokesusi started rebuilding.
She met transport operators across Lagos, trying to convince them that her startup could transform commuting.
The response was often discouraging.
"We went from one bus operator to another looking for partners. They were all men, and they saw all women pitching a transport startup. They laughed. Honestly, I didn't even realize they were laughing at us at the time," she said.
Coming from a background where engineering and problem-solving were encouraged, she did not initially see herself as someone who did not belong in the transport industry.
But many operators rejected the idea.
At home, her parents also worried. From their perspective, she had abandoned a stable career path for an uncertain business venture.
She eventually made them a promise.
"I made them a promise: give me one year. If Shuttlers didn't work out, I'd start applying for jobs. I never sent out a single application after graduation because I didn't want to split my focus. I wanted to give my dream a real chance, and thankfully, my parents trusted me enough to let me try," she explained.
The Moment Everything Changed
A turning point came in September 2016 when Shuttlers won a startup competition organised by the Office of the Vice President.
The team pitched at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, where Olokesusi met Nigeria’s Vice President and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg during his first visit to Nigeria.
The recognition changed public perception of the company.
Soon afterward, one of the bus operators who had previously rejected the startup returned with a different attitude.
"One of the bus operators who had previously turned us away called us back and said, 'It seems you guys are serious. Come and try these two 13-seater buses. If it works, we'll see where it goes,'" she said.
Olokesusi personally handled many aspects of the business.
She became the company’s first conductor, meeting drivers before sunrise, checking passengers in and ensuring people reached their destinations.
There was no mobile application at the time.
Customers booked through WhatsApp, while payments and balances were managed manually.
"For our first 20 or 25 customers, I took attendance on WhatsApp, tracked everyone's balance in Excel, and sent weekly emails showing how much they had left in their wallets... I still have those emails, and whenever I look at them, I just laugh at how far we've come," she said.
From Small Experiment to Scalable Technology Company
Shuttlers’ breakthrough came after Olokesusi reached out to Andela following a discussion about the company hiring hundreds of software developers.
She proposed that Shuttlers could help transport its employees more efficiently.
The pilot became a major validation point, bringing the company its first 100 corporate users.
It also answered a crucial question: would businesses pay for organised employee transportation?
The answer was yes.
Unlike many startups that immediately focused on venture capital fundraising, Shuttlers spent its early years concentrating on customers and revenue.
Support from organisations such as Airtel, Sahara Foundation, Ford Motor Company and World Bank-supported programmes helped sustain the business while revenue continued growing.
Before seeking major investment, the company had already generated more than $1 million in cumulative revenue.
The decision to raise venture capital came partly because competition was entering the market.
When mobility company Swvl announced plans to expand into Nigeria, advisers encouraged Olokesusi to move faster.
"By then, we'd raised less than $80,000, but we already had our first 1,000 users and had signed a multinational client, all without venture funding. I kept thinking, if we could achieve that with so little, imagine what we could do with $1 million. To me, it would have felt like having $50 million. That's when we started raising capital," she explained.
Since then, Shuttlers has raised more than $5 million, with plans for additional funding.
For Olokesusi, investors were not simply investing in a founder’s background or identity. They were investing in proof.
"I needed the business to speak for me beyond my gender, my age or the colour of my skin," she stressed.
Building the Infrastructure Behind African Mobility
Funding helped Shuttlers grow, but technology transformed the company.
For years, the business operated without a chief technology officer. A conversation with a visiting Y Combinator partner made Olokesusi reconsider the importance of technical leadership.
Eventually, Akachukwu Okafor joined as CTO, helping convert the company’s manual processes into software systems.
"We turned the manual processes we'd built since inception into software. That automation helped us grow from 1,000 users to 2,000, then 10,000, and proved that Shuttlers could scale as a technology company."
Today, Shuttlers views itself as more than a transportation service.
The platform supports transport operators by helping them access financing, working capital and vehicle loans while creating predictable income through scheduled routes.
The company is also exploring cleaner transportation solutions.
About 30 partner buses have switched to compressed natural gas, reducing operating costs by approximately 40% and lowering emissions. Electric vehicles remain part of the company’s long-term vision, although Olokesusi acknowledges that wider adoption will require significant investment.
A Bigger Vision Beyond Transportation
For Olokesusi, mobility is only the beginning.
She sees transportation infrastructure as a foundation that can support other services, similar to how companies such as Amazon and Uber expanded beyond their original ideas.
That vision is why Shuttlers’ integration into Google Transit represented more than a partnership.
For many observers, it was simply another milestone. For Olokesusi, it showed that the company had evolved into something larger.
"We've built infrastructure capable of running scheduled public transportation," she said.
She believes the systems created by Shuttlers could eventually support government transportation networks through public-private partnerships.
The ambition has grown significantly since the company’s early days.
What started as a personal desire to create a better commuting experience has become a mission to move millions of people across Africa and potentially other emerging markets.
The company that began with WhatsApp messages, Excel sheets and handwritten passenger records is now building toward a future where African mobility can become more organised, predictable and technology-driven. For Olokesusi, the journey is still underway — and Shuttlers is only beginning to explore how far the road can go.