Busfor, a Moscow-based online bus tickets platform, raised $20M in a Series B round from Russian private equity funds Baring Vostok and Elbrus Capital with participation from InVenture Partners. The company, formerly known as Gillbus, will use the funds to strengthen its leading position in Russia and Eastern Europe, and expand to neighboring markets such Belarus and Kazakhstan.
Busfor was founded in 2012 in Ukraine, and currently operates in Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and Belarus, where it was launched this October. It also has operations in Thailand under the Tickets brand. At the beginning of 2017 the service will launch on the Kazakh market.
The startup sells online tickets for intercity and international long distance bus routes and has its own branded buses for the most popular routes. Busfor provides over 5,000 bus operators and carriers in 4 countries with the technology to sell online bus tickets to customers.
With around 2 million bookings per month, the startup takes over a half of the CIS online bus tickets market. The company charges bus operators a 15% commission on all sales. In return, it helps carriers increase their profitability. The size of the bus transportation market in Europe and South-East Asia is valued at $50B.
In June 2014 Busfor raised $3M in Series A round from InVenture Partners, Intel Capital and Finsight Ventures; the investors got over 20% of company’s shares. In September 2015, as we covered in our recap, Busfor received an investment of $1M in convertible notes from Chernovetskyi Investment Group. The company’s total raised capital reached $25M.
Cover image credit: Ian Fuller
