German traveltech Omio (formerly GoEuro), one of Europe’s leading multi-modal travel booking platforms, today announced it has secured around €83.7 million in investments from existing and new investors including Temasek, Kinnevik, Goldman Sachs Asset Management L.P., NEA and Kleiner Perkins.
Founded in 2013, Omio is a travel app and platform that allows people to find and book trains, buses and flights in one place. Partnering with over 800 transport operators, Omio lets travelers search for any location, including cities, towns and villages, showing the best possible transport combinations from multiple sources. Earlier this year, the startup launched in the US and Canada, making up 10% of its customer base.
During the eye of the pandemic storm, CEO Naren Shaam put put 90% of its staff on furlough, to make it to the other side. Now, the team of 350 is back to work and powering forward.
The new funds will allow Omio to pursue its vision of unifying global transport with end to end consumer experiences. The investment will be directed at fueling continued organic growth and opportunistic M&A activities while strengthening the company’s unique product and service offering: all transport options (including rail, bus, flights, ferries, rental cars, and car sharing) diversified across 37 countries in Europe and Northern America under the Omio brand, combined with global reach through the planning engine Rome2Rio, which offers search and discovery of transport to and from more than 10 million locations worldwide.
Naren Shaam, founder and CEO of Omio, said: “Travel is an eternal need and I have no doubt in the comeback of the industry. We have seen a very promising recovery of our business over the past weeks, based on the unique strength of our product which includes all modes of transport across multiple markets. Especially in Germany and France, we are already above 50% of our pre-Covid-19 bookings despite marginal marketing spend. However, consumer expectations are changing and the industry will need to evolve to new standards and provide new products with a strong focus on sustainability. We will use the fresh capital to drive this change.”
Jan Kemper, Managing Director and CFO of Omio, said: “When the COVID-19 crisis hit the travel industry, our team made an incredible effort to switch from growth mode into a manage-to-cash organization within weeks. At the same time we started discussions with existing and selected new investors to make sure that we can ramp up our financial head-room for the coming years. Our strong network of financial partners has been key to our ability to manage through this challenging period and will help us quickly return into growth mode. The funding underlines our investors’ confidence in our strategy and the long term potential of our diversified, asset-light business model.”
Omio has already experienced a stronger bounce-back in travel bookings than expected. This has been driven by a clear change in consumer behaviour towards more ground transportation, combined with an accelerating shift towards app usage as consumers prefer to avoid kiosks and long queues. Omio actively supported this shift by continuing to improve and expand its services, for example through the launch of its Open Travel Index (OTI) to help travellers easily understand where they can travel to within Europe and North America.
