[Funding alert] BookingJini raises Rs 3 Cr in seed round from Mumbai Angels Network

Bhubaneswar-based startup BookingJini, which helps hotels increase direct bookings on their website using a SaaS product, has raised Rs 3 crore in seed funding from Mumbai Angels Network. The deal was led by Apurva Salarpuria, and 18 other investors took part in the round. The startup will be using the seed money to build the team and scale operations. 

BookingJini, which was set up by Sibasish Mishra in 2017, uses marketing automation to decrease the cost of customer acquisition and helps hotels get direct bookings on their website. 

It is an operating system for hotels where it provides a single dashboard to manage all their OTAs, manages the website hosting and maintenance, along with services like chatbot and a central reservation system. BookingJini claims to have more than 1,200 customers using the product. 

Hotels are dogged by discounts offered by various platforms and are reducing their margins while selling their inventory online. BookingJini ensures that the hotels price their rooms based on seasonality and events-based availability. 

“Bookingjini has the potential to change the way small and medium-sized hotels do business in the future,” Salarpuria said.

With the startup's iBooking Engine, the hotel's inventory details gets updated automatically and seamlessly across all platforms. This, the startup states, not only helps the hotel manage inventory easily, but also takes care of all the other important things, such as customer experience, well within the timeframe.

Jini Assist, an AI chatbot, assists in all matters related to booking and customer interface. This will operate 24 hours and remain a virtual assistant for all customers, BookingJini stated. 

The central reservation systems conducts transactions pertaining to hotel bookings based on the inventory and rates so that customers are able to handle guest reservations on a real-time basis. They also look into the prevention of over bookings.

“We can see a growing trend of investments in startups that are powering the India growth story, and seeing a Tier-II city startup performing competitively against a Mumbai or Delhi startup shows the capability,” Nandini Mansinghka, CEO and Co-founder of Mumbai Angels Network, said.

(Edited by Evelyn Ratnakumar)

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