Nandan Nilekani backed Fundamentum invests $12 M in TravelTriangle in Series C round
TravelTriangle, the Gurugram-based holiday travel marketplace has raised $12 million (approx. Rs 78 crore) in their series C funding, led by Fundamentum, the growth-capital fund for mid-stage technology companies in India backed by Nandan Nilekani and Sanjeev Aggarwal.
The existing investors SAIF Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, RB investments and a clutch of angel investors also participated in this round. This is the first investment by Fundamentum and Ashish Kumar, Partner will join the TravelTriangle board.
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. It was founded by Sankalp Agarwal, Sanchit Garg, and Prabhat Gupta. The startup currently grabs a monthly traffic of 2.5 million and has close to 700 active travel agents operating through the platform.
Reportedly, there are travel agents who get close to 90 percent of their revenue, through TravelTriangle. The fresh funding will be used to invest in building technology that further strengthens the customer interaction layer, using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), while data analytics will help build a recommendation engine. The company will also expand to newer destinations and invest in brand building.
In a press statement, Nandan Nilekani said,
"We met more than 50 companies before investing in TravelTriangle and we were very impressed by the team. We believe that this team is amongst the very best that we have seen in the Indian technology eco-system, by virtue of their learnability, customer-centricity, frugality, and hunger to build a very large business. They have the foresight and demonstrated operational experience to win this category. We are very excited about partnering with the team to build this business together."
According to experts, the Indian holiday market is a $10 billion opportunity and is expected to become $30 billion in the next five to six years.
Sankalp Agarwal, Co-founder & CEO at TravelTriangle in the press statement said,
"The vision of the company is to encompass all the components of online holiday eco-system and be the one-stop solution for the traveller. We are continually growing and have been the fastest growing holiday player with the highest NPS (Net Promoter Score). To win the confidence of pedigreed entrepreneur investors like Nandan and Sanjeev is a great validation of our journey thus far. Our success up till now has been the effort of our super motivated and diligent team."