Skift Take
TravelPerk's and TravelTriangle's fundings are yet a further sign that Skift called it right in our 2018 megatrend predictions. We said companies are investing heavily in treating business travelers as respectable consumers rather than as animals that need prodding like goats.
Travel Startup Funding This Week
Each week we round up travel startups that have recently received or announced funding. Please email Travel Tech Reporter Justin Dawes at [email protected] if you have funding news.
The total publicized this week was more than $49 million. Deals below.
>>TravelPerk, an online travel agency for business travelers, raised $21 million (€17 million) in Series B funding.
Target Global and Felix Capital co-led the round. Spark Capital, Sunstone, and Amplo also participated.
Barcelona-based TravelPerk has raised $30 million in total funding since its founding in 2015.
“What we have today is basically equivalent to the top consumer booking sites out there in terms of inventory and speed,” said co-founder and CEO Avi Meir. “We have invested heavily in the infrastructure, and we’ve seen more than 10 times year-over-year growth every quarter.”
Competitors in direct-to-business-traveler sales include TripActions, which raised $51 million in early March 2018, and NexTravel.
Meir said, “Having the best inventory is definitely something we took as a lesson from Booking.com. Instead of focusing on a nice looking app like other startups, we decided to do the unsexy thing and build inventory and direct integration with suppliers.”
>>TravelTriangle, an online marketplace for travelers and agents, raised a $12 million Series C round.
Fundamentum led the round. The venture capital firm is notable because it was recently created by Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of the Indian information technology group Infosys and India’s billionaire tech evangelist, and because this is its first investment.
SAIF Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, and RB investments also pitched in.
Founded in 2011, the Gurgaon, India-based TravelTriangle has raised more than $30 million to date.
It plays matchmaker between each customer and local travel agents, letting the customer choose the best itinerary offered by competing agents. The startup claimed this week to have more than 1,000 customers and close to 700 active travel agents on its platform.
Nilekani said in a statement, “We believe that this team is amongst the very best that we have seen in the Indian technology ecosystem, by virtue of their learnability, customer-centricity, frugality, and hunger to build a very large business.”
>>Tentrr, a New York City-based camping marketplace, raised $8 million Series A funding.
West Venture Partners led the round. Obvious Ventures also participated. The New York City company, founded in 2015, has raised a little more than $8 million in total.
It faces competition in tiny house rental startup Getaway.
>>Chargifi, an enterprise wireless power tech company, has received $7 million (£5 million) in, to expand its operations in the U.S. and Asia.
Accelerated Digital Ventures (ADV) led the round. Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Firstminute Capital also participated.
London-based Chargifi has raised $10.5 million to date.
It aims to help hotel brands such as Grand Hyatt and restaurant brands like Pret a Manger better manage, monitor, and monetize their electrical use. “From coffee shops to hotels, airports to campuses — in just a few short years from now, wireless power will be as ubiquitous as Wi-Fi,” said Dan Bladen, Co-founder and CEO.
>>Curacity, a New York-based data analytics company that launched in 2015, topped up its seed financing with an additional $1 million led by Revel Partners, with participation from angel investor Asaf Evenhaim, CEO of Crossix.
The company previously raised $2.3 million in equity financing, plus a contribution from the CEO, to bring the total for the seed round to $4 million. See our story this week “Luxury Hotels Aim to Get Smarter About Which Ads Work Best.”
Check out our previous startup funding roundups, here.
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Tags: corporate travel, funding, startups, vcroundup
Photo credit: Some of the nearly 100 workers at TravelPerk, a startup that plans to use its Series B round of funding to double the number software engineers, product owners, sales reps, and customer support it employs by 2019. Travelperk