The Top 31 Most Heavily Venture-Funded Startups In Travel
Skift Take
The global travel industry is going through a lot of disruption, and the biggest sectors include the sharing economy and ground transportation, as well as one large potential winner in the hotel booking sector.
Yesterday, travel startups HotelTonight and GetYourGuide announced major funding rounds, and both of the travel startups are now well into double-digit millions on the amounts they’ve raised so far — HotelTonight may soon even touch $100 million mark.
That gave us an idea to compile a list of all the biggest venture-funded startups currently in travel and we came up with this list of 31 companies, with the lowest cutoff of around $20 million.
Some observations:
- Airbnb and Uber, never really billed as travel startups per se, are the two biggest venture-backed startups that exist now across tech, not just the travel tech sector.
- Chinese car rental, sharing, and booking companies have raised huge amounts to compete on scale.
- Russian booking companies have raised large amounts to compete in an especially competitive market.
- In general, room sharing and car sharing requires lot of investment to build, disrupt, and compete.
- Only four B2B startups are on this list. Surprisingly, two are aimed at the intersection of travel transactions and advertising/retargeting.
- Hotel booking is where the big action is on the traditional online booking transactions side.
- On the investors side, some of the active funds on the larger sized rounds include Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Accel Partners, and Goldman Sachs.
- In the earlier stages, Crunchfund surprisingly is the most active in this list, with Ron Conway’s SV Angel investing alongside for most part. First Round Capital pops up on that list as well.
- Concur is the only active strategic investor in travel’s biggest startups.
- Almost all of the big startups in travel were started in the last five years.
| Rank | Company | Founded | Headquarters | Total Amount Raised | Major Investors |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Airbnb | 2008 | San Francisco, CA | $326 Million | Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst Partners, CrunchFund, Ashton Kutcher, Founders Fund, Greylock Partners, Jeff Bezos, Digital Sky Technologies |
| 2 | Uber | 2009 | San Francisco, CA | $307 MIllion | TPG Growth, Google Ventures, Benchmark, Menlo Ventures, Innovation Endeavors, Goldman Sachs, Benchmark, CrunchFund, Founder Collective, First Round Capital |
| 3 | eHi Car Rental | 2006 | Shanghai, CHN | $265 Million | Ctrip, Goldman Sachs, CDH Ventures, QiMing Venture Partners, Ignition Partners |
| 4 | Didi Dache | 2012 | Beijing, CHN | $117 Million | CITIC Capital Holdings, Tencent Industry Win-Win Fund |
| 5 | Kuaidadi | 2012 | Beijing, CHN | $110 Million | Alibaba |
| 6 | Foursquare | 2009 | New York City | $106 Million | DFJ Growth, Smallcap World Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, CrunchFund, SV Angel |
| 7 | Wimdu | 2011 | Berlin | $90 Million | Kinnevik, Rocket Internet |
| 8 | HotelTonight | 2010 | San Francisco, CA | $80.7 Million + Undisclosed | Coatue Management, GGV Capital, Battery Ventures, Accel Partners, US Venture Partners, First Round Capital |
| 9 | Lyft | 2007 | San Francisco, CA | $82.5 Million | Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, Mayfield Fund, K9 Ventures, Floodgate, Ooga Labs |
| 10 | Hailo | 2010 | London | $77.1 Million | Union Square Ventures, KDDI, Richard Branson, Phenomen Ventures, Accel Partners, Wellington Partners, Atomico |
| 11 | Inspirato | 2011 | Denver, CO | $65 Million | American Express, DAG Ventures, Millennium, Institutional Venture Partners, Crunchfund, KPCB, Access Venture Partners |
| 12 | YongChe | 2010 | Beijing, CHN | $60 Million | Ctrip, DCM |
| 13 | HouseTrip | 2010 | London, UK | $59.7 Million | Accel Partners, Index Ventures, Balderton Capital |
| 14 | Sojern | 2007 | San Francisco, CA | $45.7 million | Triangle Peak Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Trident Capital, Focus Ventures, Industry Ventures. |
| 15 | Adara | 2005 | Mountain View, CA | $44.1 Million | August Capital, Morgenthaler Ventures, ONSET Ventures, Thayer Ventures |
| 16 | Room77 | 2010 | Mountain View, CA | $43.8 Million | Expedia, Sutter Hill Ventures, General Catalyst Partners, Felicis Ventures, Concur Technologies, PAR Capital Ventures |
| 17 | Hotel Urbano | 2011 | Rio, Brazil | $40 Million | Insight Venture Partners. |
| 18 | Ostrovok | 2010 | Moscow, RUS | $38.60 Million | General Catalyst Partners, Frontier Ventures, Accel Partners, Yuri Milner |
| 19 | Wego | 2005 | Singapore | $36 Million | Tiger Global Management, Crescent Group, Square Peg Capital, News Corp |
| 20 | Siteminder | 2006 | Sydney, AUS | $35 Million | Technology Crossover Ventures, Bailador Investment Management |
| 21 | Mafengwo | 2010 | Beijing , CHN | $35 Million | QiMing Venture Partners, Capital Today |
| 22 | Travel.ru | 2009 | St.Petersburg, RUS | $31 Million | VEB Innovations, Mangrove Capital Partners, ABRT Venture Fund, Ventech |
| 23 | Switchfly | 2003 | San Francisco, CA | $34.8 Million | Thayer Ventures, Azure Capital Partners, Canaan Partners, StarVest Partners |
| 24 | 8Trip | 2012 | Suzhou, CHN | $24.6 Million | Vision Knight Capital, Softbank China, Venture Capital |
| 25 | Yapta | 2007 | Seattle, WA | $22.4 Million | Concur Technologies, Amadeus, Voyager Capital, Bay Partners, First Round Capital |
| 26 | Hopper | 2007 | Montreal, CAN | $21.7 Million | Brightspark Ventures, OMERS Ventures, Atlas Venture |
| 27 | Zozi | 2007 | San Francisco, CA | $21.3 Million | Pritzker/Vlock Family Office, LaunchCapital, 500 Startups, Forerunner Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank, PAR Capital Ventures |
| 28 | GetYourGuide | 2009 | Zurich, Switzerland | $20.5 Million | Sunstone Capital, Spark Capital, PROfounders Capital, Highland Capital Partners |
| 29 | Hipmunk | 2010 | San Francisco, CA | $20.2 Million | Institutional Venture Partners, Ignition Partners, Webb Investment Network |
| 30 | Viator | 1995 | San Francisco, CA | $20 Million | Carlyle Venture Partners, Technology Venture Partners |
| 31 | Gogobot | 2010 | San Francisco, CA | $19 Million | Redpoint Ventures, Battery Ventures, CrunchFund, Innovation Endeavors |
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