Montréal-based ground travel booking platform Busbud has acquired Ratality, a South African software provider for ground travel operators, for an undisclosed amount.
Busbud said it is building upon an existing partnership between the companies by acquiring the revenue-management software maker, while also extending Busbud’s reach in Africa. Busbud will add Ratality’s demand forecasting, dynamic pricing, fleet and driver management, and other solutions to its B2B software suite through the acquisition.
“This is a very special partnership that will add a key missing piece to our growing B2B offering,” Busbud co-founder and CEO LP Maurice said in a statement. “It just really made sense to bring Ratality’s team of revenue management experts on board and integrate these features further into our core B2B platform.”
Busbud was founded in 2011 by Maurice, chief technology officer Michael Gradek, and chief product officer Frédéric Thouin as a platform that allows users to search, compare, and book intercity bus tickets. Busbud said it supports more than three million bus routes worldwide from more than 4,000 bus companies in 16,000 cities across over 80 countries, in 17 languages.
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Its B2B business suite, which Busbud says is used by over 350 partners, provides an inventory management system for route scheduling and management, a white-label ecommerce platform for ground travel operators to sell tickets, and now a revenue management system.
Busbud has seen significant venture backing over its lifetime. In 2014, it raised a $9-million Series A round led by Omers Ventures and started expanding following a $14-million Series B round that saw participation from former Expedia CEO Erik Blachford in 2018. The startup went on to raise $15 million in Series C funding in September 2020, which it had been planning to raise before the COVID-19 pandemic led it to lay off one-third of its staff and move into other types of ground transportation like train, ridesharing, and shuttle.
Since then, Busbud has been active in the acquisition market. In February 2022, it acquired Chile-based intercity bus marketplace Recorrido alongside a $14 million follow-on equity funding round to support its Latin American expansion plans. Toronto-based Betterez, a reservation and ticketing management platform, joined Busbud in late 2022 to build out its B2B offerings.
Busbud completed its most recent acquisition of Brazilian bus booking marketplace Buson this past March in an effort to continue expanding its South American presence. While the terms of the deal were undisclosed, Maurice told BetaKit that Buson was the company’s largest M&A transaction to date “by a significant margin,” and was completed with a mix of cash and equity.
Feature image courtesy Busbud.
