The current round will be mostly spent on technology & marketing, with increased focus on mobile devices.
iTraveller.com (iTraveller Technologies Private Limited), a technology driven travel marketplace startup based in Bangalore, has concluded its Series A funding of $1 million from a clutch of investors, including ah! Ventures, LetsVenture and Mantra Ventures.
Founded in early 2012, iTraveller is a proprietary technology backbone, which functions as a marketplace for holidays. The travellers can discover, plan and book their trips. They can completely customize & buy their trips online. On the supply side, iTraveller aggregates native wholesale suppliers who are responsible for the operational aspects of the business that includes ground handling and fulfillment. This pans out a scalable marketplace model for holidays, for the first time in India.
The travellers who come online on iTraveller can choose their destinations, discover the hotels and transfers compare reviews and plan their activities and sightseeing for their trips. The business model of iTraveller is a disruption in the current industry format of online and offline travel agents ecosystem, which struggles to detach them from manpower linked growth model for holidays business.
"With this fund raise, our singular focus is to achieve scale. We are resolved to become the largest tech-enabled platform for holidays in the country, with an ambitious target of one billion dollar transactions in fives years from now.", says ShijuRadhakrishnan, Founder & CEO of iTraveller. "The idea is to inculcate the culture of online discovery and planning, leading to transactions, which translates to a technology driven marketplace model."
By virtue of having the native wholesale suppliers who own the inventory and best prices on the platform, iTraveller sets the ball rolling for fair price discovery in this highly disorganised market. There are over 2 lakh trips created by users on iTraveller, features over 20 travel destinations across the globe and over 60 native wholesale suppliers from across these destinations. With the level of automation enabled in the supply chain of holidays, the users are able to plan & book their holidays with the same level of convenience of booking flights, hotels or bus tickets.
"We are proud to partner with iTraveller and are very confident of the execution capabilities of the team. The team has identified scalable technology solutions to address the gap in the travel space and we are sure that our investment will enable the company to expand its reach and use the solution to extend its' services to a larger audience," says Vishal Gupta, Managing Director, Mantra Ventures. iTravelleris Mantra's first investment in travel technology space. They have previously invested in healthcare, real estate and telecom sector startups.
"Despite being the largest deal ever, interestingly it took only less than 60 days to receive commitments from the investors and complete the documentation related formalities for iTravellerdeal.Shiju and his team has been extremely prompt and co-operative in all matters and that too has helped in speedy closure," says HarshadLahoti, Founder & CEO, ah! Ventures.
The current round will be mostly spent on technology & marketing, with increased focus on mobile devices and enhanced user engagement across the value chain.
Based in Bangalore, the founding team of iTraveller includes Shiju Radhakrishnan, Nisanth Kumar, ChitraParija, RachnaKalra, Amit Singh and PoojaPande, complimenting on various skillsets across, technology, marketing and operations. The team in Bangalore is 15 members strong, poised to grow in the coming few months.
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