A Chicago-based charter bus company that’s been around for more than 15 years has, like many other long-standing and established corporations, made moves to remain tech-forward as consumers increasingly want to use the internet and their phones to get things done.
BusBank, which takes and organizes group transportation reservations through charter busses, was founded in 2001 by Bill Maulsby. At the time, BusBank was considered a tech-forward company simply because it had a website.
“[Maulsby] was really trying to bring ground transportation online, because at that time, it was mostly people leafing through the yellow pages,” said Brandon Dudley, the company’s general manager.
Now years later, BusBank has grown to one of the major players in the group transportation industry. It has organized charter busses in 135 metro areas in all 50 states and its clients include major companies like Target and LifeTime Fitness. BusBank has organized transportation for major events like Coachella, the music festival in California, and the Governors Ball, a music festival in New York. And Dudley said BusBank has been doing about $20 million in revenue a year.
“If you’re Google or if you’re one of the big banks, you’re going to call BusBank to help plan your transportation all across the country,” Dudley said.
But as people’s expectations for quick and easy services have gotten higher with the arrival of Uber and Airbnb, BusBank needed to find a way to be innovative again and simplify how people did business with them.
So earlier this month, BusBank acquired Buster, a New York-based startup that has made a digital platform for booking busses, shuttles and vans that’s as easy to use as Uber. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“The technology really allows us to scale so much faster and handle so much more [business] in a much better place,” Dudley said. “That’s really why it’s such a great fit.”
Founded in 2012, BusBank raised $4.1 million in venture capital funding from investors like Red Sea Ventures, Brand New Matter and General Catalyst, according to Crunchbase.
As part of the acquisition, Dudley said the plan is to keep both BusBank and Buster's brands active for now, and that they are gradually merging all their clients and vendors together. BusBank intends to keep both its offices in Chicago and Buster’s offices in New York, where eight people work. And there are no plans to downsize, Dudley said. In fact, BusBank plans to beef up its workforce in both cities. As a combined company, Dudley said he expects it to generate up to $30 million in revenue this year.
BusBank is just the latest Chicago company to acquire tech startups or launch their own tech divisions in an effort to keep their businesses modern. Just in June, Accenture, which employs more than 5,600 people in Chicago, acquired Kogentix, a Schaumburg, Ill.-based big data and artificial intelligence startup as a way to help it grow its data engineering business. And Northbrook, Ill.-based Allstate Insurance launched its own tech spinoff Arity in 2016, which collects data to help companies evaluate the risk of a driver.
“If you continue to use the old methods, next thing you know you’ll find two or three companies doing it not just one step better than you, but five steps better than you,” Dudley said. “You really want to continue to push forward with trying to build new solutions that are beyond what people would expect today."
