The problem we couldn't ignore
Anyone who has tried to buy a car in Botswana knows the drill. You open Facebook Marketplace. You see a Hilux for an oddly cheap P 180,000. You message. A "cousin" picks up. The pictures stop matching. The seller wants to meet "anywhere quiet". Half the time, the car doesn't exist. The other half, the deal collapses because nobody trusts anyone with that much money.
It's not Facebook's fault. It's that the entire stack — discovery, communication, identity, payment, dispute — was never built for car-sized transactions in Southern Africa. We saw family lose money. We saw friends spend three months trying to sell a car that should have moved in a week. And we figured: someone has to fix this. We're the someone.
Our mission
To give every Motswana — and eventually every Southern African — a way to trade vehicles with the same speed and confidence as someone in London or Singapore.
Cars are usually the second-largest purchase a person makes after a home. The infrastructure for that purchase should match the stakes. That's the bar.
What we believe
Trust is a product
Verified IDs, escrow, in-app moderation — these aren't features. They're the whole point.
Mobile-first, always
Most of our users open PrimeDrive on a phone, often on patchy data. Performance is a basic respect for users.
Built in Africa
We're not localising a foreign product. We're starting from Gabs and building outward, with Batswana on every team.
Fair before clever
AI is going to be huge for us, but only where it makes deals safer or fairer. Never to gamify or upsell.
Pula in, Pula out
Subscriptions and fees stay in Botswana. We hire locally, we tax locally, we re-invest locally.
Dealers & people, side by side
A first-time seller and a 200-car dealership should both feel welcome — with the right tools for each.
The road ahead
We're live in Botswana today. By the end of 2026 we want to be the trusted way to buy a car in every SADC country. After that, AI-powered finance matching, in-app insurance bundles and a connected dealer-tools suite. We're not in a rush. We're in a hurry.
Want to help?
We're hiring across product, engineering, design, operations and partnerships. Check the careers page or just write to primedrive56@gmail.com and tell us what you'd build.