{"id":42521,"date":"2023-10-20T15:21:48","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:21:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/rome2rio-scores-one-of-the-final-commercialisation-grants-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:21:48","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:21:48","slug":"rome2rio-scores-one-of-the-final-commercialisation-grants-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/rome2rio-scores-one-of-the-final-commercialisation-grants-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Rome2rio scores one of the final Commercialisation grants – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Travel search engine Rome2rio is one of the final batch of companies to receive a grant from the now defunct Commercialisation Australia.<\/p>\n

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Rome2rio\u2019s search engine offers air, train, ferry, mass transit and driving options door-to-door from any location.<\/p>\n

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The startup received a grant for $385,000 from Commercialisation Australia at the beginning of 2013, and has now received an additional $788,000.<\/p>\n

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The application was examined and approved by the Commercialisation Australia board in February and Rome2Rio was notified of its successful application late last month.<\/p>\n

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A spokesperson for the Department of Industry says it is not yet able to provide details of the last round of Commercialisation Australian grant recipients because it is still finalising offers and contracts.<\/p>\n

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Rome2rio CEO Rod Cuthbert says the funds from this latest grant will go towards technology development and hiring more engineers. He says its eight person team will grow to 10.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt will go towards continued development of our partnership platform, both API and white label programs available for partners to integrate into their own sites and inevitably most of that work also impacts the consumer cycle we operate as well,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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Cuthbert praised the Commercialisation Australia program, saying while it was quite a bureaucratic program, \u201cif you took the time to understand it, it was a valuable process\u201d.<\/p>\n

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\u201cOur case manager was experienced and added value to the process,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019re sad to see it go, but we\u2019re open to see what they replace it with.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Cuthbert says Rome2rio\u2019s website had 2.7 million visitors in June and has been growing by 30% each month for the past six months.<\/p>\n

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He attributes that growth to demand for Rome2rio\u2019s product.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019re the first people that have done a global transportation data base,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cPeople have always been out there asking questions like \u2018How can you get from A to B?\u2019 but there hasn\u2019t been a site that\u2019s stood up to answering those questions, but we can.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWe know how to get from A to B, anywhere in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The latest round of funding, gives Rome2rio plenty of breathing room funding wise.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019ve got probably a couple of years of runway at our current run-rate given we have revenues and we anticipate our revenues will grow on a monthly basis,\u201d Cuthbert says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe only thing that would drive us to do more funding is if we wanted to dramatically increase the amount of development we want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

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That said, Cuthbert points out the online travel industry is a very inquisitive space, where anything can happen.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThere\u2019s a couple of deals every week in online travel,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSmall companies that do interesting things get snapped up quickly.<\/p>\n

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\u201cAs we pass through 5 million unique visitors a month on the way to 10 million, the industry notices that type of thing and opportunities surface.\u201d<\/p>\n

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He says rather than focus on what those opportunities might bring, the team is concentrating on continuing to grow the site\u2019s traffic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Travel search engine Rome2rio is one of the final batch of companies to receive a grant from the now defunct<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60284,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42521"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}