We’re excited to announce that Rome2rio has received significant support from the Federal Government with the award of a Commercialisation Australia program grant.

The grant provides a further A$385,000 in funding for the business to support the continued development of Rome2rio’s API and white-label partnership programs. 

Amongst other things, the grant enables us to hire a fulltime project manager who will focus on further expanding Rome2rio’s coverage of train, bus and ferry routes. We’re very pleased that Chris Lipinski will be joining the team in January to fill this challenging and important role. Chris has a love of travel and passion for improving Rome2rio that leaves us confident he’ll be playing a big part in making the product even better in 2013.

I promised earlier this year that I’d write a blog post about government grants and programs supporting start-ups here in Australia. It’s now long overdue, but I wanted to wait until completing the Commercialisation Australia grant progress first. Expect a post early in 2013.