Bach, a bachelorette trip planning and group travel experience app, has announced $9 million in Series A funding led by Pritzker Group Venture Capital. The app, available on the Google Play Store and the iOS App Store, is designed to help users plan a group trip with their friends from start to finish.
Founded in 2020, Bach aims to solve the hassle behind coordinating group travel by letting groups discover, plan and book travel all in one place. The app allows you to invite your friends to plan an upcoming trip. From there you can all chat about what you want to do and determine the best location for the trip based on costs and interests. Once you and your friends have these details ironed out, you can build an itinerary and then use the app’s cost-sharing feature to keep track of all the costs of the trip. Bach also includes a marketplace that curates experiences near your destination that can be booked through the app.
While Bach started as an app, the company is poised to move beyond mobile. The startup has announced that it is launching a new web marketplace that will allow users to book experiences starting next month. Bach CEO and co-founder Mike Petrakis told AapkaDost in an interview that the company believes it will be able to attract more users, in addition to those looking to book bachelorette trips, by bringing its marketplace to the web.
“We’re opening Bach up to the internet,” Petrakis said. “Right now, when you go on a bachelorette trip, you have to download the app and go through a few different steps to find the marketplace we built. So the thought process was very simple: let’s put this on the internet. I believe people will flock to us outside of bachelor parties. If someone wants to find a party bus to book in Nashville, it doesn’t have to be for a bachelorette party. The same goes for an ATV tour in Scottsdale or a brunch reservation in Vegas.
The company currently offers local experiences in major U.S. travel destinations, including Scottsdale, Nashville and Las Vegas, and will be available in 30 cities by the end of the first quarter of 2023. Examples of bookable experiences include private chefs, goat yoga, ATV excursions, party buses, yacht charters and more.
Image Credits: Bach
Petrakis says Bach has almost 500,000 parties planned on the BACH app and two million users to date. In the past 6 months, the company has doubled the number of bookable experiences on its platform from 800 to over 1,600 and plans to reach 3,000 experiences by 2023.
As for the new funding, the company says it will be used to make strategic hires and also lay the groundwork for expanding the platform beyond bachelor parties.
“We will plant our roots for expansion beyond bachelor parties with the funding,” Petrakis said. “Launching Bach on the Internet and getting us on the Internet will be the first step in doing this. The idea is twofold: let’s dominate this space first and then start expanding to become the go-to destination for any group looking to have a weekend of fun. We want to be the platform you think of when you want to book something fun.”
The funding round included participation from Corazon Capital, Freestyle VC, Oversubscribed Ventures and other institutional partners. The new investment brings the company’s total funding to $17 million. Bach raised $8 million in seed funding led by Corazon Capital last April.
“Millennial travel is a huge opportunity, and the future of travel, especially group travel, is rapidly changing,” Sonia Nagar, partner at Pritzker Group Venture Capital, said in a statement. “While group travel is a $200 billion market, it remains a challenge for consumers to coordinate in most cases. BACH not only proves that it can be the market leader and owner of the bachelor industry, but also lays the foundation for group travel to be widely accessible in a natural way.”
While bachelor parties represent the company’s area of expertise and represent entry into the group travel space, Bach has many opportunities to expand its business, according to Petrakis, as people are already using the app for girls’ trips, birthday trips, spring break trips and more.