[YS Exclusive] Social travel network and D2C marketplace Travel Buddy raises $250K in pre-seed round

Gurugram-based social travel network and D2C marketplace, Travel Buddy, has announced that it has raised $250,000 in pre-seed funding from Eaglewings Ventures. 

The round also saw participation from some of renowned names from the Industry and serial investors like Chetan Mathur, Lloyd Mathias, Tanmaya Vats, Devesh Nayel, Sudarshan Sharma, Tarun Sharma, Siddharth Banerjee, and other marquee non-institutional investors. 

Travel Buddy plans to use these funds for building the base technology team and strengthening the iOS product for international expansion. The startup will also work with Eaglewings Ventures to raise its seed round and pre-Series A in near future.    

“We are creating a D2C travel marketplace driven by current location and related travel offerings. Given the size of the traveller community that we are planning to build (aiming at five million by 2022 end), travel providers will get enough leads from this app alone to sustain their business. For travellers, it’s a social travel network to connect, share, and meet. We will first build this for India and then expand globally,” says Saurav Chakraborty, Founder and CEO, Travel Buddy.

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Incorporated in January 2020, Travel Buddy was founded by Saurav Chakraborty along with Vijay Saini and Paromita Bir. Together their cumulative experience is more than 56 years with Saurav having worked in the Travel Industry for over 13+ years (Cleartrip, Facebook India).

Through Travel Buddy, they have created a global community of travel content creators and enabled online shops (Dukaan) for thousands of travel providers who are selling directly their services (Hotels, Homestays, Transport etc) to travellers.

“We are trying to solve two problems with technology, which are universal. The first thing is it is hard for travellers to find like-minded people while travelling. The second thing is that travellers wish to connect with locals quickly before travelling to the new destination. Having connections helps them plan their trips in a better way, with local experts,” added Vijay Saini, Co-founder and CTO, Travel Buddy.

In spite of facing two severe pandemics in 2020 (Wave 1) and 2021 (Wave 2), the Travel Buddy platform claims to have bootstrapped smartly to have a million+ travellers on the Android/iOS app and over 20,000 travel providers across India and abroad. Its app has been downloaded across 176+ countries.     

Travel Buddy is a global product. Currently, 70 percent of its traffic is in India.

“I am really very passionate about promoting travelling amongst women, especially solo travel. With Travel Buddy we aspire to be on every traveller’s device, at every stage of travel,” stated Paromita Bir, Co-founder and CBO, Travel Buddy.

According to Chetan Mathur, Director, Travel Buddy Board, ”I am so happy and excited to work with Saurav and team Travel Buddy. The space has so much potential both from a local and global level. This platform should become a CRM engine for travel providers and a networking engine for travellers.”