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Julian Hauck (CEO) and Johannes Thunert (CMO), co-founders of Distribusion

Julian Hauck (CEO) and Johannes Thunert (CMO), co-founders of Distribusion

Distribusion’s vision: Booking an intercity bus ticket as easily as booking a flight.

Distribusion’s vision: Booking an intercity bus ticket as easily as booking a flight.

EIT Digital is proud to announce that one of its supported startups, Distribusion, the leading distribution system for intercity bus and shuttle rides, has just raised an investment of 6M Euros.

Berlin, Germany - In 2012, Julian Hauck and Johannes Thunert launched Distribusion, a B2B travel tech venture to make booking an intercity bus ticket as easy as booking a flight. Since then, Distribusion has brought more than 100 intercity bus operators on board throughout 25 European and Asian countries. It now provides 2M bookable rides to online resellers with more than 10M unique visitors per month and to 4.000 travel agencies worldwide. This makes the company the largest distribution platform for intercity bus rides, on an estimated global market of 72B Euros.

Distribusion joined the EIT Digital Accelerator in 2015 in the Urban Life & Mobility Action Line. At that time, the team wanted to prepare their second investment round. The first one was in 2014. Florian Uhlig, Access to Finance Expert at EIT Digital in Berlin, assessed the startup financing needs and defined a tailor-made fundraising strategy. He identified the investors relevant in the company’s sector, business model and geographical focus, and capable to provide the resources to finance its ambitious development plans. He then introduced Distribusion to potential investors, such as Northzone in Sweden, and Business Angels with expertise in the travel sector.

"We are proud to have helped this pan-European company in its fundraising, hence accelerating the global deployment of this online bus reservation platform" says Daniel Michel, Head of Access to Finance at EIT Digital.

A couple of months later, Distribusion closed a 6M Euros fundraising with Northzone, Creandum, existing seed investors HR Ventures and Frühphasenfonds Brandenburg as well as travel industry-specific Business Angels.

"With this financial support, we will be able to grow our team and roll out our business on a global scale" says Julian Hauck, CEO Distribusion.

The new funding will be used to accelerate the product and technology development and to ramp up the acquisition and integration of new bus operators and resellers. In addition, Distribusion will push market coverage across Europe and expand its business operations to the major intercity bus markets in South America and Southeast Asia. No doubt that EIT Digital Accelerator will continue to help them. Want to take a ride?

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Co-Funded by the European Union