Before Alexey Abolmasov had a transport company, he had a travel problem. Getting around Thailand meant finding the ticket office, working out the route and paying for a piece of paper. A journey could begin with a small expedition simply to arrange the journey. For a traveler who wanted to know when the next ferry left, the internet had developed a rather inconvenient habit of running out before the pier.
That gap became 12Go. Abolmasov, a programmer and traveler, built a business around the parts of a trip that airline booking sites left behind: buses, trains, ferries and the connections between them. The appeal was wonderfully ordinary. Choose a destination. See the options. Buy a ticket. Proceed with the holiday.
The ordinary appearance concealed years of work. A search box can be drawn in an afternoon. Persuading transport operators to put dependable inventory behind it is a longer engagement. Abolmasov's career makes more sense when viewed from that side of the screen, where software meets timetables, suppliers, languages and the passenger who has quite reasonably expected the bus to exist.
A backpacker's unfinished business
Abolmasov's route into travel technology passed through software development. His professional record includes Java development at EPAM Systems and analytical work at Glencore. He also studied nuclear physics at the International Sakharov Environmental Institute. The qualification is an unexpected item in the luggage of a booking-site founder, though it would be fanciful to credit a physics degree with every subsequent business decision.
Thailand supplied the immediate problem. He traveled extensively there, and the difficulty of arranging local transport was something he encountered as a customer. The early idea took shape before the commercial service: experiments around 2010 and 2011 preceded the company's establishment and its public booking operation. By 2014, 12Go was selling journeys and explaining its ambitions beyond Thailand.
There was a useful limitation in the starting point. Abolmasov knew a particular inconvenience. He could build toward a particular result. The customer did not need to admire the technology or understand the transport industry. The customer needed to get somewhere. A business organized around that test has a fairly uncompromising examiner.
The distance between a route and a ticket
At the beginning, Southeast Asia's transport network was already there. Buses departed, ferries crossed water and railways carried passengers. The difficulty was making those services legible and purchasable to someone who could not visit every counter or read every operator's website. Abolmasov was trying to connect a working physical system to a digital customer.
That distinction affected almost everything. An operator with limited IT resources could require technical adjustments before its seats could be sold online. 12Go prepared routing information, discussed integration and then worked toward electronic sales. Some routes could be displayed before they could be booked. The difference between knowing that a service existed and holding a reservation was a substantial part of the job.
In August 2014, Abolmasov described the desired experience plainly: “We want our users' first step to be smooth and uncomplicated.” The first step was ticketing. His team was working on destinations including Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Krabi and Phuket, with more routes and modes planned. The promise began before anybody boarded.
“We want our users' first step to be smooth and uncomplicated.”
Alexey Abolmasov, 2014
It is an unusually modest ambition for a startup slogan, and a demanding one for a transport business. Smoothness requires the traveler to encounter fewer complications than the company does. Someone must still reconcile the route, the booking procedure and the payment. Convenience is often a transfer of effort, with the customer receiving the tidier end of the bargain.
Cash still had a seat at the table
12Go's early payment options reveal the practical character of the undertaking. Alongside cards and PayPal, customers could use counter service at Thailand's 7-Eleven stores. A digital reservation could therefore meet a cash payment in a familiar local shop. The product accommodated the way people paid rather than requiring everyone to acquire the same financial habits first.
By September 2014, the service had more than 100 transport operators on board, with web booking and apps for iOS and Android. Its business development director, Guido Neil, described an operation connecting suppliers and customers across different forms of transport. Foreign backpackers from Europe, America and Australia made up much of the early audience.
Those choices illuminate Abolmasov's work more clearly than a portrait of the founder at a desk would. The booking interface had to work for people arriving with different languages, currencies and expectations. The supplier side had its own routines. Each successful transaction required the two sides to agree on something quite precise: which passenger could take which departure, and how the payment would reach the right place.
The complaint worth recruiting
One of Abolmasov's better business stories starts with an unhappy passenger. The customer found errors in a timetable and in the frequently asked questions, then proposed a solution that considered both the passenger and the system. The person eventually became a key member of the company. A complaint had arrived with an unusually promising attachment: a mind for the work.
His response to a different correction was equally revealing. Asked about a missing transport service, he noticed that its station was misplaced and said it would be fixed. He described using searches with no results, and popular searches with few purchases, to decide where coverage needed attention. Customers were leaving instructions even when they left without a ticket.
That is a more interesting form of listening than counting applause. An empty search result exposes a journey someone wanted to make. Repeated interest without a purchase raises a further question about availability or the booking experience. The interface can function as a record of unfinished customer business, provided someone bothers to read it.
Abolmasov was also candid about imitation. Rivals could reproduce visible features, he argued, while supplier relationships, customer confidence and operational practice took years to establish. Buttons are obligingly easy to copy. The work behind them has a less convenient download time.
A larger map, a different job
The early business had measurable substance. In July 2014, 12Go reported that it had secured $300,000 from angel investors. Abolmasov put monthly unique visitors at 30,000 and said Chinese customers accounted for a fifth of monthly bookers. The company was already considering how to serve travelers across languages and cultures, while working on deeper operator integration.
Those figures describe an early stage, when the business still had to establish demand and extend what customers could actually buy. They also show why distribution mattered. A route available online was useful only if the traveler found it. 12Go worked with operators and other businesses as well as selling directly to consumers, making its inventory available through more than one doorway.
July 2014
Bookaway Group
is appointed
In 2021, 12Go joined Bookaway Group alongside the European booking business GetByBus. Abolmasov explained the customer benefit in terms of choice: budget, comfort and luggage could all influence which service suited a traveler. Joining a wider group offered a way to expand that work. A regional business could participate in a network extending across markets.
The next year brought a partnership with AirAsia's Super App. Its users could access 12Go's Asian ground and sea inventory, bringing buses, trains and ferries into a broader travel offering. Abolmasov described the mission as making those parts of the trip “simple to plan and book.” The same practical objective was now being delivered through another company's customer interface.
Scale changed his job and eventually his position. Bookaway Group became Travelier in 2023. That May, Travelier announced Ron Hoffman's appointment as 12Go's chief executive. Abolmasov's place in the story became founder and former CEO. The transport business he had started continued with a wider corporate structure and new leadership.
After tickets, the paperwork
His next venture takes the problem of organizing information into a different setting. Reglu, founded in 2024, now lists Abolmasov as its founder and chief executive. It describes a private digital vault and an AI-assisted workspace for families, organizations and wealth owners, with tools for storing information and sharing selected material with advisers or colleagues.
There are familiar connections in the team. Yuliya Baiko's background includes legal and corporate responsibilities at 12Go; Kira Iaryst previously led its global distribution team. Their experience now sits alongside that of chief technology officer Alexander Voronkov. Abolmasov has moved into another business involving complex information, selective access and several parties who need to work together.
The connection between the ventures is an editorial reading of his work: both ask people to use software where arrangements have become difficult to manage. The promise at Reglu concerns control over information rather than access to a departure. Its ambitions remain ambitions. An early company has to earn the trust that an established service can point to in its history.
For Abolmasov, the memorable unit of progress remains small enough to recognize. A corrected station. A useful response from a dissatisfied passenger. A route that becomes bookable. These are the moments that give his business history its human proportions. Travel is full of grand destinations. He found a career in making the next practical step easier to take.