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This Week in Travel Startup Funding: Instabridge, CatchThatBus and More


Skift Take

As more mobile discovery happens in destinations the need is urgent to provide ample free Wi-Fi hotspots in cities along with the means for travelers to find them.

weekly_startup_fundingEach week we roundup the latest crop of travel startups that have received or announced funding that week. The total amount raised this week was $4.5 million.

Here are two companies that announced they raised funding this week, listed in order by the highest amount raised. See previous roundups here.

>>Instabridge raised a $3 million Series A round from new investors Balderton Capital and MOOR and existing investor Creandum bringing the Stockholm, Sweden-based startup's total funding to $4 million.

The Instabridge mobile app lets travelers share the details of any Wi-Fi hotspot with other Instabridge users and provides access to Wi-Fi hotspots shared by everyone else in the community. The app is also pre-loaded with a database of venues with free Wi-Fi such as McDonald’s or Starbucks. The new investment will help the startup expand to more markets and improve the app’s ability to make intelligent decisions on when to connect or disconnect from a certain Wi-Fi hotspot.

>>CatchThatBus raised a $1.5 million Seed round from new investor 500 startups and existing investor Jungle Ventures bringing the Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia-based startup's total funding to more than $1.55 million.

The startup is an online travel agency for bus travel in Southeast Asia and lets travelers purchase bus tickets via a mobile app from several operators to more than 500 destinations in Malaysia and Singapore. The new funding will help CatchThatBus expand its operations to other countries in Southeast Asia such as Thailand and Indonesia and compete with larger rivals such as India's Redbus.

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