Business travel SaaS startup, TravelPerk, has announced it’s more than doubled the $44M Series C round
we wrote about just nine months ago — taking in a further $60M from its
existing investors, which brings the round to $104M, and the business’
total raised to date to $134M.
Investors increasing the size of their Series C commitment are Kinnevik, partners of DST Global, Target Global, Felix Capital, Sunstone, and LocalGlobe.
A mere three years ago the 2015-founded, Barcelona-based startup had bagged a $7M Series A — with a pitch to take the pain out of business travel booking.
Since then it’s been on a major growth tear. Co-founder and CEO Avi Meir says this momentum is behind the Series C expansion.
“We
grew faster than expected,” he tells TechCrunch. “Unit economics are
fantastic. Investors have been pushing us to inject more funding,
accelerate our growth, and expand faster. We weren’t looking for more
runway.
“We always knew that expanding this round was an option
depending on performance, and as we exceeded even our most optimistic
targets, we had the choice to stay on our same path or become even more
aggressive.”
“The team has grown 250% since January and bookings
on the platform have increased by 300%,” he adds. “The number of active
users has grown by 150% this year compared to last. When you look at
those two numbers side-by-side, it demonstrates that not only are we
adding customers, but our existing ones are booking more often.”
TravelPerk
now has more than 2,000 customers for its business travel booking
platform — including some very familiar names n the European startup
scene, such as Adyen, Farfetch, Transferwise, Sumup, GetYourGuide and
Glovo.
It’s not disclosing the latest valuation of the business
but Meir says it’s more than doubled in the last eight months — due to
“rapid growth”.
He’s also not sharing the GMV target for the year — but says it’s 300% higher than last year.
The extra Series C funds will be ploughed into further fuelling its European expansion.
It
is also trailing “major product additions in the coming weeks and
months” — which TravelPerk claims will bring “a new level of disruption
to the pricing structure of an industry that is still dominated by
outdated solutions that make business travel expensive and painful”.
It’s
certainly true that you don’t have to ask too many office workers
before you find someone more than willing to hate long and loud on
legacy platforms their employer forces them to use when they need to
book a work trip.
“In the coming weeks and months, we’ll be
releasing products that give the business traveler more freedom and
flexibility than ever before,” says Meir. “Meaning business travelers
are not restricted by the rigid, outdated systems of the travel
industry. With these releases, we’ll not be playing catchup with the
leisure travel industry, but bringing to market features designed
specifically for the business traveler.”
Given the sustained
growth tear that’s encouraged its investors to increase their
commitments, what about an IPO? Is that now fast looming on the horizon
for TravelPerk?
“It’s a very natural path for us,” says Meir. “We
don’t have a hard and fast plan, we’re focused on building a really big
company that will be a market leader for years to come, and we’re
certainly not at all focused on selling.”
“We want to be THE
choice for the modern business traveler,” he adds. “A no-brainer choice
for anyone booking, managing, reporting, or analyzing their business
travel.”
Discussing the startup’s plans for the next year, he says
they’ll aim to bolster their position with SMEs in Europe — and “expand
outwards”
“We’re planning to have 430 people hired by the end of
this year, and more than 580 by end of 2020 – that’s nearly doubling in a
year,” he continues. “This is the plan as it stands today, I wouldn’t
be surprised if next year is an even higher trajectory. Certainly that’s
the pattern when I look back at our journey so far.”
Commenting in a statement, Antoine Nussenbaum, partner at Felix Capital
added: “We are excited to see Avi and his team hitting and surpassing
their objectives, as a result we are doubling up our investment as part
of this large Series C.
“We’re delighted to be strengthening our
relationship with TravelPerk and look forward to seeing the business
continue to grow. We are particularly thrilled about the new features
soon to be released which will materially transform the traveller
experience — building on TravelPerk’s leadership position as the new
standard for business travel.”
Source. Techcrunch, July 18, 2019, Natasha Lomas
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