Online travel marketplace TravelTriangle has raised a $12 million Series C round led by Fundamentum.

The startup operates like a travel booking platform to allow holidaymakers to choose and secure their travel plans online. It also works with offline travel agents to help them offer services, such as tailoring a trip, to customers as they do when they walk into their offices in person. The company also offers a suite of back-office services designed for agencies to help bring them on to its platform and generate additional revenue.

The deal also marks the first investment from Fundamentum, a new $100 million fund established by Nandan Nilekani, one of the co-founders and former CEO of $33 billion IT services giant Infosys, and Helion Ventures partner Sanjeev Aggarwal.

Existing investors SAIF Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, RB investments and some angel investors also participated in the company’s Series C round.
In an interview to Economic Times, Nilekani said that Fundamentum evaluated more than 50 companies before deciding to back TravelTriangle, citing both the business opportunity in this segment as well as the team’s focus on frugality and unit economics.

“The Indian economy is going to become $6 trillion in ten years and there will be a huge middle class with spending power. The holiday travel market is going to grow very big,” Nilekani said.

“TravelTriangle has a unique approach of working with travel agents in a B2B2C model, which is not easy to replicate. What we also liked was the team is humble, open-minded and have a long-term vision,” he added. Ashish Kumar, partner at Fundamentum will join the TravelTriangle board.

Sankalp Agarwal, TravelTriangle’s CEO and one of three co-founders behind the business, mentioned that the money will be spent on product R&D, expanding to newer destinations as well as increasing brand visibility through marketing.

TravelTriangle closed a $10 million Series B in February 2017, and since then has seen its site traffic jump significantly from two million to 2.5 million per month. The startup has aggregated nearly 700 travel agents on its platform and services and services 60,000 customers for both international and domestic destinations.

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Raising funds is often the most tedious task for anyone looking to set off on an entrepreneurial journey. Building a business requires significant investments and while there is nothing like being able to bootstrap a successful company, investors can add a lot of value. Not only can they offer capital but also bring in their experience and network to the company. During the recently concluded Startup Knockdown+ Pune, we invited Pankaj Mittal, co-founder of Pune Angels and Vivek Nathwani from Mumbai Angels to share their opinions and experience of the investment scenario in India in a session moderated by Daksh Sharma, Founding Partner, TravHQ. Here are the highlights of the session:

(L to R) Pankaj Mittal, Vivek Nathwani and Daksh Sharma

No slowdown at early stage

While the numbers suggest that after an increase in startup investments from 2014 to 2015, there was a decline since last year, the panelists shared the opinion that early stage investors are still open to investing. The difference is because there are less investments at later stage and investors are more careful about the startups they invest in.

Tech is the future but a hard sell

We have only recently started to talk about AI and experts are already calling it the next big thing. This isn’t going to be limited to travel only.

However, Pankaj was quick to point out that the biggest challenge with any new technology is security. People are sceptical to adopt new technologies at first because of potential risks which slows down initial growth. According to him, the ecosystem takes a while to build up and we can’t expect tech adoption like Silicon Valley in India anytime soon.

Team over product

Vivek highlighted that a strong team takes high priority when looking to invest in a startup. There are many factors involved like market size, niche, competition, growth potential among others but the team holds a very important spot. There could be rough times and times when sudden change of direction is required and the right people can pull it off.

Responding to how investors deal with failing startups, he shares that they try to work even closely with the startup in question and help plan the right course of action. They put their trust with the investment and don’t remove the support in tough time.

Traction builds confidence

Investors don’t put their bets at idea stage. Not because they aren’t sure about the potential of the idea but because they are looking to minimise the risk. Which is why they want to see some traction, a reasonable number of early adopters to build the trust.

There is no right time

Speaking about when should a startup look for funds, the panelists shared the opinion that there is no right time. Founders should try to push the event as further away as they can and if possible, survive on own investments. There are other schools of thought but it is just about balancing between the pros and cons of early investment.

Anshoo Gaur, IAN Member and MD of AmDocs also shared some really interesting lessons for young startups during the event. You can read more here.

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