Over the past decade or so, there has been a great deal of interest in the travel, hotels, and travel accommodations sectors, especially by startup investors. The travel industry has become extremely competitive and hundreds of startups have created entirely new markets for accommodations, even as many others work on new ways of booking travel and making it accessible to more people, primarily using technology.

This year was bigger and better for the global travel industry. According to CB Insights, while travel tech had an uneven year, emerging markets stood out as bright spots. As of October 2017, deal activity was on track to surpass last year’s record-breaking 316 deals, while equity funding in 2017 YTD had already nearly matched the 2016 total.

Let’s take a look at some of the top travel deals of the year:

1. Airbnb remained an investor favourite (San-Francisco, Online marketplace and hospitality service)

Sharing economy behemoth Airbnb claimed one of the top spots for the largest deals to travel tech startups, closing its Series F round raising roughly $450 million and taking their Series F total to a little over $1 billion. This valued the travel giant at approximately $31 billion.

2. Traveloka raised US$350 million (Indonesia, Online travel agency) 

Southeast Asia’s leading online travel company Traveloka raised US$350 million from Expedia. The round valued the company at $2 billion, making it the second most valuable tech startup in Indonesia.The partnership gave Traveloka travellers access to a diverse set of international accommodations, and conversely, Expedia managed to leverage Traveloka’s local knowledge to deepen its presence in Southeast Asia.

3. OYO closed a $250 million funding (India, Budget-hotel aggregator)

With plans to expand abroad, starting with countries in Southeast Asia, and hopes of doubling their revenue in 2018, budget hotel startup OYO continued to remain an investor favourite. The company closed a $250 million Series D funding round, backed by Sequoia Capital India and SoftBank Group, among others. It then followed this funding with an additional $10 million in funding from Chinese hotel management firm China Lodging Group.

4. Xiaozhu gets Jack Ma’s blessing with $120 million in funding (China, Home-sharing platform)

Another Chinese counterpart of Airbnb, home-sharing site Xiaozhu received $120 million in funding. Yunfeng Capital, run by famous investor Jack Ma, led the investment. Joy Capital, Morningside Ventures, and Capital Today also participated in the Series E round, and placed a more than $1 billion valuation on the company. This Beijing-based startup is more like the original peer-to-peer short-term rental model that Airbnb pioneered.

5. Klook net $60 million (Hong Kong, Tours and Activities marketplace)

Hong-Kong based Klook, a service for finding and booking travel activities, closed a $60 million Series B funding round led by Sequoia China. Existing backers Matrix Partners and Welight Capital, a firm founded by former Tencent executives, also took part in the funding round. The company, which introduced services such as local transfer options and WiFi device rental, would also soon add options for restaurants, wellness, shopping and more.

6. Goomo inched ahead with a $50 million investment (India, Omnichannel travel-tech)

Omnichannel travel-tech startup Goomo raised $50 million from a Mauritius-based fund manager, Emerging India, to build Goomo’s online platform, products, marketing, and establishing its offline partner network. Founded in March 2017 by Varun Gupta, Goomo has launched its services with bookings for flights and holidays, and trade fairs and will soon be expanding it to include hotels, trains, buses and visas online.

7. Trip.com raised $39 million; got sold to CTrip (California, Online travel agency)

CA-based travel planning and local discovery app Trip.com had raised $39 million in funding, from Expedia, Battery Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, MySpace founder Chris DeWolfe, Square CEO Keith Rabois and angel investor Oren Zeev. However, in probably one of the most spoken-about buyouts of the year, the startup was lapped up by China’s largest online travel agent, Ctrip for an undisclosed amount.

8. Treebo snapped up $34 million in funding (India, Budget Hotel Chain)

Budget hotel chain Treebo snapped up $34 million in fresh round of funding. The Series C funding came more than a year after Treebo had secured its Series B funding. Hong Kong-based hedge funds Ward Ferry Management and Karst Peak Capital led the latest round.

9. GoFro received a $10 million backing (India, Tours and Activities marketplace)

Holiday marketplace GoFro received $10 million in funding from Japanese major H.I.S. Co., Ltd., a travel agency with its headquarter in Tokyo and India’s largest OTA MakeMyTrip. The company said it plans to utilize these funds by building its tech platform, expansion to new geographies and growing its supply and agent network.

10. GuestReady added $3 million to its war-chest (London, Rental property management)

GuestReady, the close contender to Airbnb that manages rentals on behalf of property owners, closed a $3 million seed round to grow its presence in Europe and Asia. The round was led by Impulse VC, the Russian fund that is backed by billionaire Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich, with participation from Australia’s Xponova and Boost Heroes, a VC led by Lastminute founder Fabio Cannavale. Existing backers Swiss Founders Fund and Senn and Partner were among others in the round.

What are the other deals that grabbed your attention? Let us know.

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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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Tripadvisor has invested in Bangkok-based restaurant booking service Eatigo, as the start-up announced today. While the amount was undisclosed, Eatigo said that this Series B coupled with Series A that they generated last December would bring their coffers to US$15.5 million.

Eatigo specialises in off-peak bookings helping restaurants fill tables which are usually empty. It operates in Singapore and the Thai cities of Bangkok and Pattaya. The team goes by the saying “connects empty stomachs with empty tables” with no coupon or pre-payment of any sorts is necessary.

These funds galore would be majorly used for expansion to more South-east Asian nations but the CEO Michael Cluzel is keeping mum on which country to go next.

“We have feet on the ground in some [new] markets, off the radar. So there’s definitely work going on already,” he says.

Eatigo’s business model is based on time-based discounts- which means periods with the empty tables will lead to greater discounts. The merchants, around 700, offer discounts all day long, every day and all of the merchants offer 50% discounts on all food items time during the day. The start-up claims that it experiences a Month-on-Month growth of over 20 percent in reservations and revenue. Eatigo is currently working on some new features including loyalty programmes and a new layer of an algorithm that would enhance the user experience.

The speculations keep circling that Eatigo might work in accordance with Tripadvisor’s TheFork in future as there would be an active dialogue between the two of them in due course of time, says Michael.

From what it looks like, the tech giants are getting all bundled up with acquiring experience and dining portals to provide a more holistic experience to its customer base. With Airbnb acquiring Trip4real and now Tripadvisor sponsoring Eatigo, the trend is on the rise and is here to stay for a while.

Source: Tech in Asia

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Similar to Startup Knockdown Kolkata, the Hyderabad edition of the event also featured some informative panels by experts. Our objective of hosting these discussions and sessions is to help the entrepreneurs make the most out of the event. That is why, we invite experts to share knowledge with them. Sreekanth Perepu, Investment Director at Hyderabad Angels Ventures engaged in a chat about the investment scenario in India and what investors expect from the startups coming to them during the Hyderabad event. Here are the highlights:

Sreekanth Perepu, Investment Director, Hyderabad Angels Network with Daksh Sharma, Co-Founder, TravHQ

Don’t come without a team

This is a fact highlighted by almost all the investors, in travel or otherwise. A smart brain with a good idea is no good if he can’t put together the right team to execute it. That is why it is important to have a strong core team that comprises of people who complement the skills of each other and strongly believe in the idea or product so that they can work together towards realising the common goal. You lose weight from your pitch deck if you don’t have a team to show.

Investors don’t invest in ideas

There is only so much one can judge about a product when it is in the idea stage. According to Sreekanth, investors don’t invest in ideas, they invest in people who have the potential to turn those ideas into a product and eventually into a successful business. Also at the idea stage, you barely have anything to prove your point. That is why it is important to have the numbers to show for the early days.

Never approach investors without a plan

While you expect the investors to support you with your money, they expect you to have a plan on how that money will be used. It is crucial to have details on how the capital will be utilised and what the investor can expect with the next round.

Exit shouldn’t be the primary plan

While laying down the plan, it is good to have a potential exit in place. However, Sreekanth shares that it shouldn’t be the prime objective of any entrepreneur. It is great to have an exit strategy because some businesses can’t grow beyond a certain point but you shouldn’t go out building a travel business just hoping that some major OTA will acquire your product.

Don’t rush into the deal

Finding the right investor shouldn’t just be about the capital. It often gets tough for entrepreneurs looking for investments but that doesn’t mean they should just sign a bad deal. Sreekanth shared how a promising startup offered 40 percent of the company to the investor at seed stage without looking at the consequences. This killed the possibility of a subsequent round, eventually killing the startup, resulting in a failure for both investor and founders. Make sure you take your time to gauge what is on the table and then go ahead with it.

The experts shared lot more interesting stories and actionable insights during the event. If you have a promising travel startup, you can sign up for the upcoming event at startupknockdown.travhq.com. You can find details about the winners of last two events here: Kolkata | Hyderabad.

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Building a business isn’t easy. While it starts with a great idea, the real battle begins only after that. Right from putting together the right team to getting the first customer, the challenges only start to magnify with scale. During the early days, having the right mentor to guide the team could be the difference between a story and a lesson. We got the chance to speak with one such man, who has been instrumental in driving young startups towards success.

Saumyajit Guha, COO, Calcutta Angels Network

Saumyajit Guha, COO of Calcutta Angels Network, has got 15 years of experience with proficiency in Business Incubation & Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Development, Market Research & Analysis. Process Migration, Operations and Business Analysis. He has worked with the startup incubators at some of the best educational institutions in India including IIT Kharagpur & IIM Calcutta. He will be hosting a workshop at the upcoming Kolkata edition of Startup Knockdown+. But before the event, he shared some tips for any startups looking to pitch to an investor and his expectations from the startups participating in the upcoming and future editions of Startup Knockdown.

What investors look for

Talking about what an angel investor looks for in a startup while gauging the potential, he put feasibility and scalability high on the list. According to him, “An angel investor doesn’t come on-board just as an investment partner. He or she looks for an idea that is scalable and can get subsequent funding to give the investor a fruitful exit. If the product isn’t scalable, however good it may be, investors won’t be interested.”

He also highlights the importance of a good team with the right mix of enthusiastic and skilled people. He says, “The idea might be scalable but is the team capable enough to scale it up? This is a question most investors would ask themselves before investing in any startup”. When asked about how he gauges the team, he said that a little background check, customer and vendor feedback and the conversations tell enough about them.

Technology is also a major factor for an investor. Crediting the importance of a technology driven business, Saumyajit shares, “In today’s world, if the startup is relying on manual processes and there is no technology involved in it, there is no point starting up.” Generally a tech driven business is easier to scale and thus more interesting for investors. For most investors, these are the major points they look for before getting into the finer points.

Tips for participating startups

Coming to the topic of Startup Knockdown Kolkata, here are some of the tips Saumyajit had to share with the startups:

• Don’t build a business to get funded. It might sound a bit weird coming from an investor but we strongly believe in that. Build a business to do the business and investors will reach out to you.
• Plan your pitch smartly. At times startups spend too much time explaining the problem statement. Any investor listening to you, even the audience, understand the problem statement easily. Instead of stressing too much on the problem statement, it is better to concentrate on how you are addressing the problem and are going to make money out of it.
• Don’t start looking for investment in the idea stage. It is very naïve to look for investment at that stage. At that stage you should look for fund from the three Fs. Friends, Family, Fools. Also, Government, both Central and State, is pumping a lot of money to support very young startups and you should look at them. Majority of the investors will not invest at that stage unless the idea is very unique. If you are talking about something like marketplace, until there is a proof of concept, some initial traction to show, not many will be interested.
• Know how the funds will be used. We have seen examples where the founders plan to spend on a plush office when they clearly don’t need one. You have to be frugal and spend on what is required. If your business allows you to operate from your home with your laptop, you should. I don’t have an office for Calcutta Angels Network because I don’t need one. It is not about how much you can spend but about how well you can manage whatever you have got. If you are pitching and saying that you would get an office, you are not getting my money. If you say that I want to hire a kickass team and build a strong product, you have at least got my interest.
• Invest yourself in the startup. When an investor sees that an entrepreneur has skinned his or her own back in a bid to build the product, he is prepared to trust. Your pitch should portray how much you have worked on the product, how much time and money you have spent and how smartly have you played so far.

New startup hubs in India

Bangalore is undoubtedly the favourite place to start a tech business for many founders. When asked if he has observed new regions emerging as a favourite spot for startups, Saumyajit had a different opinion. He shared, “I have observed a tendency to go with the flow and a ‘me too’ attitude with many startup founders and I often fail to see the reason. You don’t have to be at some specific geographical location to innovate. Just because Uber has an office in a metro city, doesn’t mean you also need an office in the same neighbourhood.”

Adding further to our question, he shared some of his observations. “Entrepreneurs should note that B2B, while not as fancy, is a promising segment. You are in a business to make money. The B2B space offers huge opportunities to make money and lot of investment isn’t required. B2C requires scaling up a lot and that requires heavy investments. The key is to identify the right opportunity. Teams should look at complementing popular businesses instead of competing against them and flooding the market. In travel industry, corporate travel is a promising prospect startups can look at” shared Saumyajit.

Saumyajit will be joining us in Kolkata over the coming weekend for Startup Knockdown. He will be sharing his experience and important tips with the travel startups on how they can build a strong business. Find more details about the event at startupknockdown.travhq.com.

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Taiwanese startup HelloWings is a search and comparison service for low-cost airline tickets. Formerly known as TixChart, HelloWings is a product of backpacker travel company Outland. It raised its seed round with an undisclosed amount coming from Taiwan-based Pinehurst Advisors, and Singapore’s KK Fund and COENT Venture Partners.

Image : Kuster and Wildhaber/ CC BY-ND 2.0

It offers a suggestion on providing the comparison on a real time basis and brings up prices on the cheapest route. HelloWings specialises on low-cost carriers hence providing the flyer with more options.

Traditionally, a low-cost carrier quotes are obtained from different websites by the flyer. It’s often a hassle to compare prices between each low-cost carrier on the same route. HelloWings provides price comparisons on the same day and also provides price comparison of the entire year accurately. It supports 96 airlines with over 400,000 routes and has an average user growth of 10 percent every month.

Looking at the markets in Singapore and Malaysia, HelloWings plans to spread across this territory. More recruits will be entertained in these target markets that include engineers and market experts. Since this geography is a home to growing middle class, people with more buying power and a hunger for travel who frequent more by budget airlines, the people are familiar with the kind of offers the comparison site is here for.

The edge low-cost carrier comparison site has over the metasearch is that it focuses on the specific audience and the market doesn’t seem to be monopolised as there’s no one player getting ahead of the others. The freedom of options in the eyes of the consumer is plenty.

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As oil prices continue to diminish and US dollar is keeping strong, international travellers are finding a value for their money with Asian tourist destinations. The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) estimated international tourists to increase by 43 million people every year, eventually reaching a mind-boggling 1.8 billion by 2030. Emerging economy destinations are predicted to grow at an average rate of 4.4 percent where Asia stands to profit the most. The analysis speculates that the tourism in the region will outgrow average growth in the rest of the world, with an overwhelming number of 535 million visitors by 2030.

The magnitude of this opportunity certainly isn’t escaping companies that provide unique travel experiences. Meanwhile, KKday, a Taiwanese travel start-up, announced that it has raised US$4.5 million in series A funding to assist acceleration in its Asia-focused expansion. The round is led by AppWorks Ventures with participation by 91Capital.

KKday is a site that connects travellers with local tour operators. According to a company statement, since its launch in early 2015, KKday has provided 5,000 unique travel experiences and generated revenues of US$914,000* in January 2016 alone. The start-up focuses on destinations in Asia, with activities featuring in Bangkok, Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong and Taipei majorly but also provides  in places like Paris, New York, and Cappadocia. The startup has branch offices in Hong Kong and mainland China, with plans to open up offices in Singapore, South Korea, and Japan by April. It also expresses its keen interest in Macau and Malaysia as important growth markets.

Jamie Lin, founding partner of AppWorks Ventures, in a truncated statement said;

“More travellers [are] embracing independent travel. KKday’s services are customer-oriented, satisfying travellers’ expectations of customizing their own trip,”

Asian travellers are an important outbound market with Chinese travellers alone estimated to have spent US$129 billion in 2013. KKday recognized that vacation packages provided by traditional travel agencies did not suffice increasing expectations for unique, personalized, and bespoke tour experiences and tried to bridge the gap. Since they’ve got a new set of funds to expand its operations across Asian domain, probably we’ll see them grow in the tourism sector with greater potential.

Source: TechinAsia

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RoomsTonite, the last minute hotel booking service provider, has recently announced funding of USD 1.5 million from a group of angel investors. The Bengaluru based startup is looking to expand its base of hotels and further improve technology with the funds.

The investors include Nikhil Vora (founder of Sixth Sense Ventures), Lashit Sanghvi (co-founder of Alchemy Capital), Vebkar Vardhan (promoter of DNA Networks), Mohammed Bin Abdul Rehman Al Khalifa (Chairman of Caravan Group), Ralph Berezan (Berezan Group) and Vissal Mathew and Balamurali Krishna (IDS Software).

RoomsTonite is also in talks with few institutional investors to raise another USD 7 million to USD 10 million in Series A funding to further accelerate growth.

RoomsTonite allows travellers to book last minute hotels at huge discounts. For most parts of the year, hotels have got huge number of unsold room nights. RoomsTonite allows them to sell these room nights and generate additional revenues out of the unsold room nights. As it is meant to deal only with the unsold inventory at last minute, bookings can be made only up to 3 days in advance. Revenues come from a commission based model similar to OTAs.

Speaking on the occasion, Suresh John, CEO and Co-Founder, RoomsTonite said “While technology is at the forefront of what we do at RoomsTonite, our constant focus is to ensure that customers get the experience of real time booking at a great price and to further help them with their last minute travel plans through our platform.”

“On the hotels front, we are a unique platform to help sell their unsold inventory (which otherwise would have been empty). So, hotels can earn additional revenue through RoomsTonite, and therefore increase their RevPAR (revenue per available room),” adds John.

As young travellers have started considering alternative stays over hotels, RoomsTonite earlier introduced vacation rentals on the app to stay in line with the changing trends. Recently they also announced partnership with Paytm to offer their inventory to Paytm customers. This will give them a wider reach and trustworthy payment options allowing them to quickly expand their customer base.

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The Travel & Tourism industry has seen a huge surge in the past few years and things have gained even more momentum this year. Innovative startups are coming up in this space and scaling at a rapid pace. We have also witnessed some major acquisitions like TaxiForSure by Ola and Mygola by MakeMyTrip. Local investors that were dormant until now have joined the game to further heat up things in this segment. The investments grew by over 50 percent in the second quarter of the year as compared to the first quarter.

Here is an exclusive infographic by TravHQ which consolidates some travel startup investments that have made the news in 2015. There are some startups in the list who haven’t disclosed the amount, but the experts can predict the range by looking at their categories, funding source and observing similar other investments.

Budget stays

This segment has seen the most action this year and according to industry experts, we will see a lot more activity in budget stays in the coming months. Finding quality budget stays was a major challenge for travellers in India and these startups seem to  be addressing the issue. While most of the inclusions are budget hotel chains like OYO Rooms, Zo Rooms, Treebo Hotels, FabHotels and Wudstay, Stayzilla operates as a platform for individual hotels as well as alternative stays.

Trip Planning

These services help you plan your travel by offering multiple itineraries or tools that can help you create your own. This is another industry segment that might see more players though growth is limited by the high dependence on community and limited monetisation opportunities here. Trip Hobo and Tripoto are two startups that help you discover itineraries of other people and help you plan your own vacations.

In-destination services

These services come in handy when you are travelling or have reached your destination. It isn’t exactly the hottest segment right now but with newer technologies entering the scene, it will gain momentum very soon. Guidoo and Trip38 are two very different startups that wiill help you in your travel. Guidoo allows you to explore destination with audio visual guides and offers the option to book local activities. Trip38 manages the itinerary in one place after you have got the bookings done via a booking service. It also offers the option of booking local activities similar to Guidoo.

Marketplace/ Travel search

Travel marketplaces are still evolving in India and are slowly gaining traction. Portals like Travel Triangle, Trip Factory or iTraveller leverage technology to capture customer preferences and offer a better tailored package for them. Travel search engine ixigo also saw investments this year while they are working to ramp up their services and increase the focus on mobile.

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