Bolt, the leading ride-hailing platform, today announced a significant commitment of €100 million over three years to strengthen safety measures on its platform. This investment will support The Bolt Safety Team in its critical work of product development, customer support, safety feature awareness, and preventative measures to minimise safety incidents. The announcement was made during a global safety campaign launch in Johannesburg.
Bolt’s dedicated Safety Team of over 500 specialists works tirelessly to achieve the company’s safety goals. The team comprises Safety Specialists who provide 24/7 customer support from Bolt’s Safety Hubs across the globe and Safety Experts based in Tallinn, Estonia, who focus on product development, engineering, and operations.
Simo Kalajdzic, Senior Operations Manager at Bolt, said: “We take our responsibility to ensure the safety of our platform seriously. With the €100 million committed over three years to safety, we recognise that this requires an end-to-end approach across our business in South Africa. That’s why The Bolt Safety Team of over 500 specialists worldwide will focus their efforts on product development, support, and scaling preventative measures to stop safety cases before they happen in that time. We’ll also continue to raise awareness of our safety tools with educational campaigns like the current ‘Bolt Safety Team’ campaign in South Africa to raise awareness of the in-app features we know can help prevent cases.”
Gauteng MEC for Finance and Economic Development, Lebogang Maile, lauded the significance of Bolt’s financial commitment to enhance tech safety on its platform for riders and drivers, during his address at the announcement and launch event: “The timing of this launch is deeply symbolic as it takes place in a month that holds great significance in the calendar of South Africa and the world at large. The month of November marks the beginning of the Global 16 Days Campaign, also known as the 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children….I mention this because the fight against gender-based violence is important in the context of global safety and is especially significant for South Africa, a country that is marred with gender-based violence and femicide,” said Maile.
The MEC added: “It is for this reason that Bolt’s Global Safety Campaign, and other initiatives by the company which aim to raise awareness of safety features, safety initiatives, and scaling preventative measures to prevent incidents of harassment and violence, are especially welcome in a South Africa that is battling the scourge of gender-based violence and femicide. Gauteng, the most populous province in the country, with a population of over 15.1 million people, is necessarily an important place for the launch of this campaign. Our unique economic and demographic profiles, which have a direct link to crime levels higher than the national average, make safety interventions crucial. For this reason, the Gauteng Provincial Government is especially grateful that Bolt South Africa has made safety a key priority. For us, safety in the e-hailing industry is both a social and an economic imperative.”
As part of the commitment, new trip verification features will join Bolt’s suite of safety tools in the coming months to help address the critical role of mutual trust between driver partners and riders in the safety of the platform. These features will include trip count and unique four-digit trip pickup codes to help match riders and driver partners. Bolt will also continue to scale its Rider Verification solution.
Bolt will also continue to invest in upgrading existing features like Ride Check to proactively detect if a trip’s route unexpectedly changes or takes longer than expected to finish and introduce Trusted Contacts to ensure Ride Check notifications are escalated to a friend or loved one if needed. Record Audio will continue to support The Bolt Safety Team’s safety investigations and has already been used to trigger in-app audio recordings to submit with Customer Support tickets across 14 markets, including South Africa, since launch.
This all supports The Bolt Safety Team’s work in partnership with external experts, including the Automobile Association of South Africa (AA), to raise awareness of safety issues, with features like the in-app Emergency Assist button that allows riders to quickly and discreetly alert an emergency response team if they need assistance.
