Member Article

Trivago-backer contributes to 'substantial funding round' in CheckMyBus search engine

London-based investment firm Howzat Partners has contributed to the latest funding round in German startup CheckMyBus, the search engine for intercity buses.

In what is described as a ‘substantial funding round’ the digital-focused investment group, which also has a team in Luxembourg, contributed funds along with business angels Dr. Cornelius Boersch and Bernd Dietel to support CheckMyBus’ international expansion and growth.

The Nuremberg-based startup has developed a meta-search engine that sifts through 300 bus operators across 50 different countries worldwide to provide real-time schedules and pricing information to users.

While 90% of the $70bn bus market still occurs offline, there has been an increasing, if not begrudging, movement towards digitisation in the industry encouraged by liberalization of EU markets and improving services across Europe and the world.

Commenting on CheckMyBus’ ability to capitalise on this growth, Marc Hofmann, Chief Executive, said: “We believe that online sales for intercity bus travel will show extraordinary growth in the coming years, driven also by the offer of meta-search-engines like us.

“The support of the new investors puts us in a strong position to take full advantage of this growth potential.”

Backers Howzat, who focus on startups between the seed and Series A stage, have previously invested in travel search engine Trivago in 2008, and it is easy to see the parallels between the now global online platform and CheckMyBus.

Sascha Hausmann, partner at the investment group, believes meta-search to be the next big thing in the bus market and believes the German startup is sitting on the vanguard of a similar revolution to that which has been seen in the hotel and flights market.

He concluded: “With great scalability and superior content for users, meta-search is predicted to become an equal success story in the bus market comparable to what we have seen for hotels or flights.”

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