Itilite Raises $4 Million for Business Travel Booking: Travel Startup Funding This Week

This week travel startups announced more than $131 million in funding.

Earlier this week we reported that Uplift, a financial services vendor, has raised $123 million in a Series C equity round. Madrone Capital Partners led the round.

Travel brands tap Uplift’s services and technology to help U.S. consumers pay for travel in monthly installments via the startup’s loans.

Here are other companies that announced this week that they had raised funding.

>>Itilite, a rewards-based online booking tool for business travel, has raised $4.2 million in a Series A rund of funding.

Matrix Partners led the round. Itilite previously raised an undisclosed seed round.

Like TripActions, Rocketrip, and similar services, Itilite helps corporate employees book travel and offers incentives when the workers stay within the corporation’s budget and policy.

The startup, based in Bengaluru (Bangalore) covers flight, bus, and hotel bookings. Mayank Kukreja (CEO) and Anish Khadiya co-founded the company in 2017.

>>Flyiin, an airline distribution technology company, has raised about $2.7 million (€2.4 million) in seed funding from a group of U.S.-based angel investors, such as former Air Canada CEO Montie Brewer.

The Berlin-based company, founded in 2015, pivoted last year from a consumer-facing price-comparison service to a business-to-business focus. It is building an Airline DirectConnect Platform for its test client, Qixxit, an intermodal travel search service owned by Deutsche Bahn Digital Ventures. The goal is to help Qixxit display flight search results by only showing directly bookable fares.

>>VDroom, a travel startup, has won a $1.13 million (€1 million) grant from the European Commission to develop its virtual reality content management system for hotels.

The start-up previously raised a half-million from international angel investors.

The Tel Aviv-based VDroom, founded in 2017, aims to helps hotels and other travel brands create and market panoramic or 3D visual online imagery. The company proactively reports a brand’s visual content to search engines, rather than passively waiting for the engines to find and fetch new content. VDroom has already worked with more than 100 hotel chains globally, such as a Leonardo Hotels property in Cyprus.

VDroom co-founders Michal Hubschmann (CEO) and Lance Bailey previously founded and sold their travel booking company Easytobook to Dutch-based Travix, owned by BCD Holdings.

Skift Cheat Sheet:
We define a startup as a company formed to test and build a repeatable and scalable business model. Few companies meet that definition. The rare ones that do often attract venture capital. Their funding rounds come in waves.
Seed capital is money used to start a business, often led by angel investors and friends or family.
Series A financing is typically drawn from venture capitalists. The round aims to help a startup’s founders make sure that their product is something that customers truly want to buy.
Series B financing is mainly about venture capitalist firms helping a company grow faster, or scale up. These fundraising rounds can assist with recruiting skilled workers and developing cost-effective marketing.
Series C financing is ordinarily about helping a company expand, such as through acquisitions. In addition to VCs, hedge funds, investment banks, and private equity firms often participate.
Series D, E and beyond These mainly mature businesses and the funding round may help a company prepare to go public or be acquired. A variety of types of private investors might participate.
Check out our previous startup funding roundups, here.