Distribusion a leader in the B2B ground transportation marketplace has today announced securing funding of €30M. Now its Series B, the round was led by Lightrock, winged by Creandum and Northzone.
Scheduling ground transport made as easy as booking flights
“Ground transportation often gets little attention despite having a market size larger than air passenger transport. It is the only accessible long-distance transport option for two-thirds of the world’s population. Yet, access from search to purchase and ticketing is often cumbersome and offline in most cases.” explains Distribusion’s CEO Dr Thomas Doering.
The ground transportation market has remained highly fragmented and often subject to bespoke, legacy tech in supplier scheduling and booking systems. Consequently, the planning and booking of scheduled journeys online have often either remained a hardly possible or confusing and time-consuming experience for travellers. Over 100M ground transportation tickets are still purchased offline every day which testifies to the ongoing digitalisation gap in the industry.
Distribusion tackles this issue via its B2B ground transportation marketplace which provides a vast array of operators from 70+ countries with instant access to an unparalleled network of global leading online travel agents(OTAs), meta search websites, and other mobility platforms. Distribusion’s standardisation layer empowers online retailers to sell tickets for any operator by making use of its provided API, without the need for individual contracts or technical effort. Consumers benefit from the ability that results from comparing and purchasing tickets on websites and apps they know and trust.
The German mobility tech has already achieved building the largest B2B network of ground transportation carriers and retailers around the world. The last two years also saw the company successfully extend its operations to the LatAm (Latin American) market. An interesting highlight: since pre-covid, Distribusion has achieved 10x passenger number growth and has plans to connect 100M passengers per year by year-end 2024.
The mobility tech expects to utilise its funding to continue its rapid global expansion beyond the currently served European and LatAm markets as well as to further develop its platform’s capabilities.
Founded by Johannes Thunert & Julian Hauck in 2012, the mobility tech’s model has proved that the increased accessibility to ground transportation is highly beneficial to the environment. Transportation accounts for nearly 20% of the world’s CO2 emissions. By booking trips via Distribusion’s platform and gaining access to buses, trains, etc, users substitute more pollutive modes of transport such as taxis, private cars and planes, directly contributing to reducing CO2 emissions from transport.
“Distribusion is playing an essential role in driving the adoption of mass ground transportation, one of the most environmentally friendly forms of transport, and hereby helping to reduce CO2 emissions in travel. We are excited to support the Distribusion team on its global growth ambitions benefitting carriers, retailers, travellers, and the planet,” commented Christopher Steinau, a Partner at Lightrock.
