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August 12, 2013 06:56 pm GMT
A startup called Wanderu, pronounced “Wander-oo,” is hoping to become the Kayak of motorcoach and train travel, a sector of inter-city transit that does not yet have a leading ticket aggregation site. Wanderu, which accumulated about 20,000 user sign-ups in private beta, is rolling out to the public today. Wanderu closed a $2.45 million seed round early this month led by Alta Ventures, with participation from Orbitz.com Chairman Jeff Clarke, former Greyhound bus CEO Craig Lentzsch, and Drummond Road Capital Inc, along with a number of angel investors. The site aggregates bus and train schedules, which would otherwise require checking a number of sites to find the cheapest tickets and find connections between cities. The user inputs his or her start and end addresses, and from there Wanderu provides potential itineraries complete with connections and transit directions to and from the closest station. The idea,Wanderu co-founder and CEO PolinaRaygorodskaya told us, is that you could be in the middle of nowhere, and Wanderu would tell you exactly how to get where you need to go. The site is rolling out in the Northeast first, with plans to expand to the Southeast soon. Aggregating bus information has been a complicated problem to solve, Raygorodskaya said, and one that the team has been working on since October of 2011. “If you look at Kayak, they pay money to license data from airlines. Within the bus industry that information’s not out there. It’s extremely outdated. We’ve had to build it from scratch, because there are no APIs. We’ve partnered with bus companies to work with them to get access to their data.” Wanderu now has 12 partners, including BoltBus, Go Buses, Concord Coach Lines, and Trailways of New York. With these bus lines, the site has 80% coverage in the Northeast. Wanderu takes a cut of each ticket sale made through the site. AlthoughRaygorodskaya did not say what percentage cut that was, she did say that they make more on average than travel searches do for flights. The bus market is larger and growing among different demographics than one might expect.Raygorodskaya said that a survey done by the National Transportation Safety Board found that last year there were 750 million people traveling by intercity bus versus 730 million people flying between cities. “It’s becoming much cooler to travel by bus. Back ten years ago, the demographic was people who couldn’t afford other forms
Original Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/CrHdfzS3M6s/
To Match The Growing Number Of Ground Travelers, Startup Wanderu Launches A Kayak For Bus and Train Schedules
A startup called Wanderu, pronounced “Wander-oo,” is hoping to become the Kayak of motorcoach and train travel, a sector of inter-city transit that does not yet have a leading ticket aggregation site. Wanderu, which accumulated about 20,000 user sign-ups in private beta, is rolling out to the public today. Wanderu closed a $2.45 million seed round early this month led by Alta Ventures, with participation from Orbitz.com Chairman Jeff Clarke, former Greyhound bus CEO Craig Lentzsch, and Drummond Road Capital Inc, along with a number of angel investors. The site aggregates bus and train schedules, which would otherwise require checking a number of sites to find the cheapest tickets and find connections between cities. The user inputs his or her start and end addresses, and from there Wanderu provides potential itineraries complete with connections and transit directions to and from the closest station. The idea,Wanderu co-founder and CEO PolinaRaygorodskaya told us, is that you could be in the middle of nowhere, and Wanderu would tell you exactly how to get where you need to go. The site is rolling out in the Northeast first, with plans to expand to the Southeast soon. Aggregating bus information has been a complicated problem to solve, Raygorodskaya said, and one that the team has been working on since October of 2011. “If you look at Kayak, they pay money to license data from airlines. Within the bus industry that information’s not out there. It’s extremely outdated. We’ve had to build it from scratch, because there are no APIs. We’ve partnered with bus companies to work with them to get access to their data.” Wanderu now has 12 partners, including BoltBus, Go Buses, Concord Coach Lines, and Trailways of New York. With these bus lines, the site has 80% coverage in the Northeast. Wanderu takes a cut of each ticket sale made through the site. AlthoughRaygorodskaya did not say what percentage cut that was, she did say that they make more on average than travel searches do for flights. The bus market is larger and growing among different demographics than one might expect.Raygorodskaya said that a survey done by the National Transportation Safety Board found that last year there were 750 million people traveling by intercity bus versus 730 million people flying between cities. “It’s becoming much cooler to travel by bus. Back ten years ago, the demographic was people who couldn’t afford other formsOriginal Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/CrHdfzS3M6s/
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