Montreal’s Busbud is a bus travel booking website with the largest coverage, offering over two million departures around the world every week to and from nearly 4,000 cities in 80 countries. Today the company announced the largest raise in its history, bringing the total fundraising to date up to $40 million. The new funds will be used to fuel technology development, further expand the team and accelerate geographic expansion. Busbud may be well positioned to benefit from the rise of in-country travel as global restrictions gradually ease up around the world ahead of a full recovery.

This $15 million series C was led by the Canadian Business Growth Fund and Investissement Québec (IQ). New investors also include BDC Capital, EDC and Singapore-based K3 Ventures, along with current investors Inovia, Plaza Ventures, and Claridge each upping their investment in Busbud. The company’s series B was an $11 million raise in January of 2018.

“We continue full speed ahead on our quest to make sense of this huge and fragmented intercity bus travel market, which boasts more passengers than air travel, while being widely overlooked by the travel industry. We’ve built deep expertise integrating with bus back-end systems around the world. Working together with our bus industry partners, we believe we can keep translating this expertise into a delightful experience for bus travellers worldwide”, said Busbud CEO & Co-founder LP Maurice.

Earlier this year, Busbud recruited two seasoned executives to its leadership team: Andrew Boch as COO, who was previously COO at Hopper and Boston-based LevelUp, and Richard Cohene as CMO from Facebook, who brings 15 years of experience in digital marketing.

“We believe that Busbud’s leadership team possesses the skills and experience to execute on their vision to continue to grow the leading global bus travel aggregator and booking provider,” George Rossolatos, CEO of CBGF explains. “We are proud to partner with LP, and have Busbud as our first investment in Quebec and hope to do more in the province”.

Busbud continues on its impressive growth path. With revenue growth at 110% Y/Y pre-COVID, the company has also diversified its activities in 80 countries, which the company hopes will allow for its continued growth even amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, as local travellers book more short-haul, in country trips.