Skift Take
GoEuro CEO Naren Shaam said his company is having strong growth in helping consumers book intercity trips on their smartphones. But can he guide his company into profitability?
Five years ago this summer, GoEuro debuted to stand out from most established travel companies by showing consumers rail, intercity coach, and flights side-by-side.
Back then no one predicted that the concept was promising enough for the Berlin-based company to eventually raise $145 million from top-tier venture capital firms.
To scale, GoEuro faced a classic chicken-or-egg problem. Suppliers wouldn't bother to work with it unless it had customers. Customers wouldn't use it unless it had tickets from big companies on popular routes.
GoEuro addressed the issue by listing offers and encouraged users to click out to suppliers for booking. The user experience was poor for customers, however, especially on mobile devices — which many rail and bus operators weren't optimized to handle.
So the company pivoted away from metasearch, or price-comparison. Since 2016, GoEuro has been primarily a travel agency when it comes to rail and bus bookings. Today nearly all of its rail bookings and most of its bus bookings are tapped from supply directly from transportation companies.
Investors liked the model. GoEuro has raised $145 million (€150 million) from top-tier venture firms like Silver Lake, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Battery, and Goldman Sachs.
GoEuro's fundraising prowess is rare among travel startups in Europe. Only a few companies have raised more, including BlaBlaCar, a carpooling platform that has raised about $335 million, Skyscanner, a flight-comparison company that raised $197 million before being bought by Ctrip, and GetYourGuide, a tours booking agency that has raised $175.5 million.
GoEuro used some of the money to buy traffic and to hire business development help to sign up transportation companies. Those efforts further helped to address the chicken-and-egg problem of creating a vibrant travel marketplace.
GoEuro has grown in several ways since October 2016, when it raised its most recent investment.
Today GoEuro has about 20 million users per month, where a "user" is defined as "a visitor who interacts with the product." That's double the user count from spring 2017.
As of this month, the company said it offers a full product in 15 countries, up from a dozen in October 2016.
Profit Search
GoEuro declined to disclose in an interview Tuesday any metrics on revenue growth.
The company did confirm it is not profitable in any of its markets — a situation it chalks up to being in a phase that requires heavy
