LONDON, 21st March 2012 – SilverRail Technologies, the company behind the global rail ticketing platform SilverCore, has raised $15 million in Series B funding. The investment accelerates SilverRail’s vision of making passenger rail travel as easy to book as airline tickets. This news follows a highly successful year in which SilverRail added several new rail carriers to its platform, including Renfe in Spain and ViaRail in Canada. SilverRail also partnered with global travel sellers ebookers, GetThere, Egencia, KDS and several others to offer multi-country rail into their core booking platforms.
Canaan Partners led the Series B funding as the first investment in their new $600m fund IX. SilverRail’s current investors Sutter Hill, Accel Partners, GrandBanks Capital and Brook Ventures also strongly supported the round. The funding enables SilverRail to accelerate the addition of rail carriers and the development of cross-border and inter-carrier journey planning. SilverRail’s goal is to have all of Europe’s major rail carriers integrated into the SilverCore platform in the next two years.
Aaron Gowell and Will Phillipson founded SilverRail in 2009 to disrupt the multibillion-dollar rail travel industry. By consolidating content across multiple rail carrier systems, SilverRail has created a marketplace for sellers and suppliers to connect where historically it has been close to impossible. With extensive experience as pioneers in online travel technology, Aaron and Will saw the complexities and fragmented nature of the global rail market, and recognised the opportunity to make the search, shopping, booking and support of train tickets as easy as air tickets. SilverRail is now consolidating the world’s rail ticketing systems, seamlessly connecting suppliers, sellers and search.
“The $300bn rail market is the single fastest growing sector of travel today,” said Aaron Gowell, CEO and co-founder of SilverRail Technologies. “Passenger rail will increasingly dominate regional travel, driven by the perfect storm of four factors: 200 mph trains replacing regional air travel; rail markets deregulating and creating competition; a 90% cleaner environmental footprint than air travel; and, $200bn a year investment in infrastructure - 2x the investment in the commercial air industry.”
“We invested in SilverRail because of the company's world-class team and innovative technology platform that’s completely disrupting the multibillion-dollar train travel industry," said John Balen, general partner at Canaan Partners. "Over 60% of rail tickets are still sold offline at the train station immediately prior to departure, but consumers and travel booking companies want a more streamlined process. SilverRail has created the first technology platform that makes purchasing international train tickets as easily as air travel, and we're excited about the huge growth prospects of this business."
SilverRail’s platform currently offers in-country and multi-country ticketing in eight countries, including the UK, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg, Spain, Germany, Canada and the US. Rail tickets in these countries are made available through SilverRail’s partners AgentWare, Atriis Technologies, Dolphin Dynamics, ebookers, Egencia, eGlobalfares, GetThere, KDS, Orbitz for Business and Rearden Commerce.
