Why Flix Expanded to Latin America: Insights from Max Zeumer, CCO of Flix

Thanks a lot for having me.

Yeah. Thanks a lot. So I'm Max. I started at Flix ten years ago. I have been building the international markets ever since. And it's been super exciting. I mean first, as you said, we moved from being a German startup to being a European startup. So in the first step up until 2019 we focused a lot on Europe, and then ventured off to the US which was great and very exciting to have this iconic Greyhound brand integrated, which when you start in this industry, Greyhound is the name out there. So that was a super exciting step and as you said, most recently we expanded into Latin America which is fantastic. I mean really great experience for me personally, and also obviously super exciting markets that are out there.

It was actually not that long ago. It was 2023. I went to Brazil at the time and Chile and it's been impressive. I mean obviously I focused a lot on my industry, looked at a lot of bus terminals, a lot of buses and that's super impressive. I mean it's just a large industry. You have a lot of great infrastructure. The bus terminal in São Paulo is gigantic. It looks a little bit like an airport. It's 80 departure bays. So it's a very different scale from what we know in Europe. So that's been great. And also the bus product you see out there is fantastic. I mean, you have very great quality buses, you have luxury buses that recline a lot more than what we have here in Europe. So it's been great to see what the state of the industry is. And I got to travel a little bit. Unfortunately, not as much as I would have loved, but I got to see a little bit of the countries in Brazil and Chile, and it's really beautiful. It's fantastic, the variety. But yeah, I was very impressed by what I saw during those trips.

So for us when we look at markets it's always there are many factors but the two main ones we look at are how big is the market and what's the regulation like, can we apply our model in those markets. And Brazil was our first step into Latin America because there was an ongoing liberalization process, so it was a different model before where you had different concessions for lines and the supply on a line was limited and that was in the process of being changed and that's why we wanted to be part of that and basically have our foot on the ground while we were there. And Chile just scores extremely high on what you wish for in a market. It has a strong regulatory system. It's big enough. It's actually a very long country but a lot of the activity is in the middle part of the country. So you don't have to go all the way from far north to down south for us. Right now we're centered around Santiago and now we're gradually going further north and further south from there. So Chile is really the poster child of a market for us in terms of regulation, market size, density of population. So it's a great market.

Yeah, I mean mass transportation and putting up to 50 or 80 people in one bus is in itself already environmentally friendly. But we don't want to stop there. We love the vision of going as green as possible. So we're constantly looking at alternative drives. And we have a very open approach. I mean we look at local ecosystems and what's possible, what's pushed politically in different markets. What alternative drives are available and particularly what charging infrastructures are available. And we do tests all across the globe. In Chile as you said we did battery electric. We also do alternative biofuels, bio gas. We're really very open there and we see good momentum. And for me, I'm going to a different part of the world now but one thing is really impressive in India: we see that the kind of this initial chicken and egg problem has been overcome. So there were subsidies that pushed battery electric and there was a very clear commitment from the government for battery electric and what you see now a couple of years in is that a super strong ecosystem has developed. So you have local OEMs producing local India manufactured battery electric buses. You have a lot of players investing into the infrastructure so you can charge and that brought the whole thing to a point where for us in India today it's actually comparable to drive a diesel bus to driving an electric bus in terms of cost, which is something we don't see in the rest of the world. And for me it's a fantastic example of how it can be done. And I think that's also the issue is the same in Latin America that you have in India that you just have very densely populated cities and a lot pollution from cars. So that I think it just shows that there is a way and I'm very excited also in Chile, for example, that there's a lot of political will to drive this and it's great to see that it's possible. It just takes one or two more steps to get to this ecosystem where then it really is the driver of the future.

Yeah, I mean it's basically that it's just a giant market. It's a market that when you're in our business you cannot ignore. So it's very exciting and it's been great to be there on the ground to see what the bus industry is like. And the bus terminals that we visited are even bigger than the ones in Brazil. So very impressive. And it's also one of those countries where you don't have relevant train infrastructure. So a lot of it is bus transportation on the inter-city piece. So we're very excited. We're getting ready to launch. And it's always that time just before launch that's the most exciting when you know you're piecing everything together and preparing for the big day. But yeah, very much looking forward to making our first steps into Mexico.

Yeah, that's I think that's a critical part of the success. I mean we do a lot of desk research before we enter a market, but ultimately from a distance you don't get it right. We always hire two key people in the beginning. One is an analyst that helps us with all the on the ground research and then the next big hire is a local managing director that then builds the team and drives everything. But you need the local knowledge and you need somebody on the ground that understands everything and has local visibility. Otherwise it's not possible to be successful.

Yeah. I mean for us it's been just the opportunity itself is gigantic. Out of the global market of around about 70 billion, the Latin American market is 18 billion. So it's just huge and I would imagine that that's the same for many industries. The opportunity is just too big to be overlooked. And then one thing as a German sometimes you look at Latin America and you kind of have this image that it's fairly similar but it's really not. It's very different markets, similar like in Europe every country is very different. You have to embrace that and really pick the markets, understand the local specifics and tailor your business model and go to market strategy to those markets. I think that's super important. And as discussed before, our key to that is always to build a local team to make sure that you get the local specifics and fine-tune everything to get the product right and have that product market fit.

Thanks a lot for having me and I also hope that we see a lot a lot more green buses across the Latin American continent.