Travelstop Counts on Asian Startups to Unlock New Era in Corporate Travel
Skift Take
For over a decade, corporate travel management companies have been trying to pry open the huge market in Asia but have hardly made a dent. Travelstop says now is the time, as the market is full of high-growth startups that will "get it." Perhaps such new players will finally disrupt the space.
Five months and $1.2 million in seed funding later, Singapore-based Travelstop, which aims to disrupt the huge corporate travel management space in Asia, is rolling out local versions of its platform this week in seven languages in Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam.
Competition in the sector in the region is only beginning, and the startup sees the ability to offer a localized product as key to become a dominant disrupter.
Asia’s corporate travel management space is ripe for a shakeup. The reasons are not dissimilar to those in North America and Europe, where startups such as Palo Alto-based TripActions and Barcelona-based TravelPerk have jumped in to try and streamline cumbersome and complex ways of managing business travel booking and expenses, and raised millions of funds in the process.
A handful of entrepreneurs in Asia-Pacific are having a go at it. Besides Travelstop, there’s Baoku in China, Tripeur in India, and Corporate Travel Management in Australia. In Southeast Asia, Travelstop, based in Singapore, is believed to be the only tech-focused corporate travel startup there to date.
The company is led by its CEO Prashant Kirtane, chief technology officer Vijay Aggarwal, and chief product officer Altaf Dhamani, ex-Yahoo! engineers who later launched Travelmob, which was fully acquired by HomeAway in 2015.
After rebranding and leading HomeAway’s expansion in Asia for two years, they left HomeAway and set up Travelstop in August.
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