Deyor Camps, the startup aggregating and organising camping activities, has announced raising a pre-series A round led by Venture Catalysts. Existing investor Dheeraj Jain, who has been actively involved in the strategic growth of the company since it started its operations in January 2016, also participated in the round, which also saw participation from other prominent investors such as Dr. Ritesh Malik and Japanese VC firm REAPRA Ventures. 

Founded by Chirag Gupta, Aakaar Gandhi, Himashu Aggarwal, and Gautam Yadav, Deyor Camps has an active inventory of over 600 verified camps and close to 1000 activity vendors spread across 70 locations. In our previous conversation with Deyor Camps co-founder Chirag Gupta, he shared that in order to deliver on customer trust, the team went manually scouting for right vendors for the initial six months before turning focus towards distribution.

Ankush Nijhawan, Co-founder, TBO Group said, “We are glad to be part of the journey of Deyor Camps which we believe will compliment TBO travel portfolio and distribute adventure travel to our large travel agent network.”

At the seed stage, Deyor Camps received investment from ibibo group company Travel Boutique Online (TBO) soon after the launch. TBO has a network of over 20,000 travel agents which is accessible to Deyor Camps as part of the partnership.

Speaking on the investment, Dr. Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, Co-founder & President, Venture Catalysts, said, “As India’s first and only chain of branded adventure camps and accessories, Deyor Camps has addressed the most painful challenges on the supply side by creating a robust distribution channel as well as through strong OTA integrations and networking. It also has a very strong and focussed founding, and is well positioned to take advantage of the exponential growth in the demand for adventure travel as a category leader. Having invested in this high-potential venture, we will now be eagerly tracking its market growth and supporting its operations with our specialised start-up focussed services. We will also be looking to invest in more promising start-ups going forward, as we set about achieving our vision of establishing India as the start-up capital of the world.”

Venture Catalyst has previously been involved in early stage investments across e-tailing and SaaS startups.

Chirag Gupta, Co-founder & CEO, Deyor Camps, commented, “The latest investment gives us the resources to expand quickly and strategically into new locations, innovate rapidly, and deliver on our vision to organize the fragmented adventure travel sector in India. With such illustrious investors on board, we are confident of achieving greater growth and scale in the days to come. We have diluted 5% of our equity to raise investment in this round.”

The team at Deyor Camps

Vikram Bharati, Head of Investments at REAPRA Ventures, added, “The team at Deyor Camps is bold in its vision and passionate about what it does. It is creating and fostering a new industry. We believe that when you take a bunch of young and smart individuals who are passionate about a cause and who don’t care about traditional norms, magic can be created. Deyor Camps envisions inspiring young people to travel and experience the depth and breadth of India through camping. We think this is an admirable vision and we see this being backed up with a solid business model. REAPRA is keen to support a team with a vision and plan like this.”

With this investment, Deyor Camps is looking to ramp up the marketing activities, expand the team and strengthen technology integration. You can read more about Deyor Camps here.

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“We will see of that once we reach” is usually how most of us think of what we are supposed to do once at the destination. In fact, less than 2 out of 10 travellers book their activities in advance according to a Google study.

The story is not much different with camping activities. As an increasing number of young independent travellers step out to explore new places, they are moving past the long list of hotels on offer online and are looking at the alternative accommodation options. Chirag was, and continues to be one such traveller. He would often head out with his friends to explore destinations that aren’t on the tourist map and on many of these trips, he would often scout for camping providers instead of searching for a hotel.

The team at Deyor Camps

However, he shares that on most occasions, this involved finding the right person. Someone who has been there and can direct to some providers or at least give a vague idea of where to look. For some of these destinations, there was information available online but mostly scattered across multiple sources like personal blogs and social media posts painting an incomplete picture. It wasn’t as easy as heading to Goibibo and selecting the options from a drop down menu.

Working in the investment space, he along with the other founders was involved closely with many entrepreneurs striving to solve real world problems. This motivated him to put together the ideas that have been sitting at the back of his head for long and turn them into a product that others like him can put to good use.

Deyor Camps entered the picture to organise the space with the help of technology. Putting their analytical capabilities to good use, Dheeraj Jain, Chirag Gupta, Aakaar Gandhi, Himanshu Agarwal and Gautam Yadav, studied the market extensively to tailor the product well to the young target audience before finally launching to public. Chirag shares that 84 percent of millennial travellers would prefer adventure travel and taking 4.7 trips a year, they are very open to new experiences.

Over the nine months Deyor Camps has been active for, they have built an inventory of over 600 camps and signed up close to 1000 activity vendors spread across 70 locations. According to Chirag, discovery is only a small challenge in what they are building. An even bigger challenge is to gain customer trust and deliver on it. This is why the team spent the first six months travelling to multiple locations to handpick the right set of providers before starting to open gates to travel agents and customers.

A validation for the model came from TBO not long after the launch. Naspers backed Travel Boutique Online invested in Deyor Camps at seed stage while also bringing its 19,000 strong network of travel agents to the table. This created a major demand channel along with many others the team was setting up. They are also working with other online portals like MakeMyTrip and TravelTriangle to provide for camping activities listed on the platforms and have already served over 3000 travellers in past three months without having to push aggressively in B2C space.

While we assumed that it must be challenging to work with such a large number of providers, Chirag says otherwise. In fact he takes pride in sharing how seamlessly they are able to integrate the providers in their network and how comfortable the providers are working with them. According to him, as the providers don’t have to deal with multiple sources, they are not only happy in working with Deyor Camps but some of them are also offering better prices than what they initially did for the added convenience.

Speaking about competition, he dismisses the alternative accommodation platforms as they have a stronger focus on homestays and villas. There are no direct competitors focusing on just this niche but multiple activity platforms and OTAs offer camping and related activities among other services. However, instead of going head on against them, Deyor Camps is partnering with many of them to provide for this specific segment. Major travel brands are happy to work with them for camping activities as it saves them the legwork for what will only be a fraction of their entire business.

Deyor Camps started off with strong momentum and plans to carry it going forward. The team has forged multiple partnerships over the past months and right now they are in process of seamlessly integrating the new partners in the chain. As they continue with this, they are also looking to step outside India into Southeast Asia and parts of Africa. They have already identified and partnered with providers across these geographies and will go ahead as soon as they have built enough momentum in India.

More details about Deyor Camps can be found at www.deyorcamps.com.

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Travel Boutique Online has taken an equity stake in Deyor Camps, a chain of branded adventure camps in India. The Naspers-backed portal has more than 19,000 agents, and Deyor Camps would cross- sell each other’s products.

The company quoted that Travel Boutique Online would enable its partners to sell branded campsites at more than 45 locations in India. Deyor Camps was founded by Dheeraj Jain, who is currently placed as a partner at a British hedge fund Redcliffe Capital, Chiraag Gupta, Aakaar Gandhi and Gautam Yadav.

Jain quoted to Economic Times,”DeyorCamps has been instrumental in sending 10,000 people for camping during its first quarter of operations. With Travel Boutique Online as our strategic partner, we will be able to reach out to its well-established database of consumers who trust the company and its travel agents.”

Chirag Gupta reveals that Deyor Camps plans on launching a technology platform that would make booking a camping trip as hassle-free as reserving a hotel room giving shape to a highly fragmented sector.

Ankush Nijhawan, MD of Travel Boutique Online quoted,”The value proposition offered by Deyor Camps is unmatched in this market.”

Deyor Camps aim at expanding into the neighbouring south and Southeast Asia to leverage demand for alternative accommodation. It has entered into a contract with over 100 campsites in 45 locations and an additional 75 campsites for three years. It’s targeting 300 campsites by the end of the year.

Sorce: EconomicTimes

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