TravelTriangle raises Series B round of $10M from RB Investments

Gurgaon-based TravelTriangle, a holiday marketplace, has raised $10 million in a Series B round from RB Investments, along with the participation from existing investors such as SAIF Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners.

With this round of funding, the platform aims to further work towards profitability. It also plans to enhance features in the product and increase the organic traffic on the platform.

“We have grown faster than OTAs (Online Travel Agents) in the leisure segment and are now fast approaching their scale. With this new round of investment, we will be able to achieve our vision faster. Our success up till now has been the effort of our super-motivated team,” says Sankalp Agarwal, Co-Founder and CEO of TravelTriangle.

He adds that he plans to convert this investment into offers for both suppliers and users. For suppliers (tour operators), the platform plans to build software for their walk-in clients and data algorithms; for users, the platform is adding payment features and also expanding the EMI payment feature.

Talking about TravelTriangle, Harshavardhan Bothra from RB Investments says that the opportunity of serving the large do-it-for-me market in holidays is under appreciated. What sets them apart are their operators, who are diligent, persistent and insightful. He sees the TravelTriangle marketplace as the key beneficiary of a fast growing outbound holiday market and increasing fragmentation of offline travel agents. Increasing consumer expectations and needs make travel agents and related industry players indispensable, which results in a great opportunity for TravelTriangle.

Launched in 2011, TravelTriangle is a holiday marketplace that helps travellers book personalised trips at the best prices by connecting them to travel agents local to the destination.

This is the fourth round of funding for the company. Within a year of its inception, TravelTriangle had raised an angel funding round of Rs 60 lakh from a group of individual investors. It then raised a pre-Series A investment of $1.7 million from SAIF Partners in July 2014 and closed series A financing of $8 million from Bessemer Venture in April 2015.

According to the release, to further accelerate its growth, TravelTriangle plans to hire more employees and extend its operations. The company aims to serve more than 100 holiday destinations across India and worldwide. Its content attracts around 20 lakh visitors on its website every month and serves travellers from more than 65 countries.

Tourism marketplace

The overseas travel industry is growing at 40 percent CAGR year-on-year. The leisure travel market in India, as of today, is about $80 billion annually and is set to grow to $150 billion by 2024.

According to a VCCEdge report, venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) funds invested $115.69 million across 13 deals in the travel segment in 2014. In 2013, there were nine transactions amounting to a total of $8.2 million.

According to another study, during the quarter ended June 2015, hotels and packages transactions rose 14.4 percent year-on-year, but net revenues of the segment grew just 2.8 percent, because of increased discounts.

In the travel startup segment, ventures like Trip Factory and Tripoto have also set their foot on the ground.

During July 2015, Trip Factory raised its Series A funding in a round led by Mohandas Pai and Rajan Pai. During March 2015, Delhi-based Tripoto raised Series A from IDG Ventures India and Outbox Ventures.

Besides these companies, the biggies like MakeMytrip, Cleartrip, and Yatra have also observed an enormous growth in the past few years.

Citing a recent third-party study, MakeMyTrip says that it enjoys a 40 percent market share in the hotels and packages segment.

These developments present an interesting picture of the industry. It seems that, unlike other sectors, the travel industry is going to yield a positive result soon.

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