GoEuro launches global expansion, unveils new company name

Berlin-based transport platform GoEuro is embarking on a global expansion strategy to add inventory and users in South America, Asia and the United States.

As part of that effort, the company is changing its name to Omio, a name it says it selected in part because the two Os “symbolize the origin and destination of a journey and at the same time, create a subtle link to the original brand name.”

CEO and founder Naren Shaam says the question of which of the three regions will be added first will depend on the sophistication of the ground transport providers’ existing technology and whether it can be integrated efficiently. He expects to select the first market and product concept by early 2020.

In addition to growing outside Europe, Shaam says Omio will deepen its presence in that continent, including adding service in Portugal, Ireland, and parts of the Nordic region and Eastern Europe and adding more long-tail suppliers.

“For example, the tiny villages connected by regional bus companies that are not in any sort of global distribution system - we want to bring simple one-click mobile ticketing experience to all of them,” he says.

Shaam says it will also continue to improve the product’s ability to return multimodal transportation itineraries in a single transaction.

“We do offer it today, but it is a very complex product from a ticketing system,” he says.

“There’s a lot more innovation we need to do before we can scale it across the board.”

Shaam says his long-term goal is to create a more natural search and booking process for consumers, one that is based on their needs rather than on modes of transport.

“Our guiding belief is that travel planning in the future will be a completely different experience from today: Instead of searching for stations and airports, people will search for destinations. There will be no need to queue to buy a paper ticket, and no need to buy separate tickets for each stage of the same journey. Transport will be demand-led, by consumers,” he says.

Founded in 2013, Omio says it has 27 million monthly users, is fully operational in 15 countries and has product available in 18 languages.

The expansion plans are fueled by a funding round of $150 million that came in October. Less than a month later the platform added ferry search and booking to the system.

Shaam says, for now, Omio is “very good with our finances,” but he adds, “If you look at the amount of money that is raised by inner-city transport companies - ride hailing, bike sharing, car sharing - it’s in the billions. Intercity transport systems are equally large markets, and the amount of capital raised to solve that is tiny compared to inner-city. So if you really want to build global transport in a single product - then there will be more capital coming in the future.”