“Two-thirds of the fund will be deployed for marketing and the rest will go towards product development,” said Ramu Kallepalli, Co-Founder of Travelspice.
Founded by Kallepalli, Prashant Mitta and Ankit Manglik in February of 2017, Travelspice Now Pvt Ltd works with 3-star to 5-star hotels in more than 212 cities across India and six cities outside the country. The Bangalore-based start-up, which targets brand-agnostic and value-conscious consumers, claims to provide discounts on hotel bookings. Hotels benefit, too, as they can fill perishable room inventory with fully paid and non-refundable bookings.
“The travel market in India is set to grow exponentially and we feel Travelspice, through their opaque platform, has the potential to capture a good chunk of this market,” said Pramod Dsouza, Co-Founder of Eagle10 Ventures.
Kallepalli has founded two other start-ups, based in Chicago and Hyderabad, before co-founding Travelspice.
Travel-tech has been one of the favourite sectors of investors of late.
In April of 2017, branded budget hotel marketplace OYO Rooms, which is operated by Oravel Stays Pvt Ltd, closed a $250-million round led by existing investor SoftBank Group. Bangalore-based Ruptub Solutions Pvt Ltd, which operates Treebo Hotels, had raised Rs 112 crore in Series B funding led by Bertelsmann India Investments.
In June of 2016, Gurgaon-based Casa2 Stays Pvt Ltd, which runs FabHotels, had raised $8 million in its Series A round from a group of investors including existing investors Accel Partners and Qualcomm Ventures.
In May of 2016, Matrix Partners and Nexus Ventures invested an additional $13.5 million in Stayzilla, the Chennai-based budget hotel and homestay aggregator that shut down earlier this year. In March 2016, Room On Call had raised $2 million in a funding round led by on-vehicle advertising company CASHurDRIVE Marketing Pvt Ltd.
Source: VCCircle