Spiral Ventures invests in Vietnam’s online bus ticket booking system Vexere

“We are pleased to announce that we have invested in Vexere in Vietnam which offers bus seat inventory management and reservation Software as a service (SaaS) for bus operators and selling those tickets on online,” Ryu Hirota, Principal of Spiral Ventures, recently shared on  Facebook. Financial terms remain undisclosed.

“We will soon release the official detailed information about this investment,” Vexere founder Tran Nguyen Le Van told DEALSTREETASIA in an interaction. Vexere.com was officially launched in July 2013. It has since listed information of more than 2,000 bus operators and attracted about 2,000,000 monthly visitors, to become the number one online bus ticket booking portal in Vietnam.

Vexere offers the Bus Management System (BMS), which is used by more than 300 big bus operators. In Vietnam, the demand for mid-distance transportation by bus is increasing thanks to lower pricing, $10 in average, than flights and the convenience it offers such as night travel, according to Hirota. People used to go to bus station and queue to buy tickets, but Vexere is now allowing those people to book and purchase tickets on online. In addition, their SaaS solution enables the bus operators to manage their seats inventory in real-time and increases productivity of their operation.

Now this is the new phase where the startup can invest the funds to further accelerate their growth, Hirota stressed, adding that Spiral Ventures will also revolutionize and grow Vietnamese transportation market.

Spiral Ventures was established in 2012 by IMJ Corporation, a major digital marketing company, as an independent venture capital subsidiary in Japan. After IMJ was acquired by Culture Convenience Club in 2013, the venture fund continued its investment activities and relocated its office to Singapore to change strategy and start a venture capital fund for the Southeast Asia market.