TravelPerk, a Barcelona-based mostly SaaS startup that’s constructed an conclusion-to-conclusion company travel platform, has closed a $ 21 million sequence B circular, led with the aid of Berlin-primarily based target world and London’s Felix Capital. past buyers Spark Capital and Sunstone also participated within the circular, alongside new investor Amplo.
once we final spoke to the startup lower back in June 2016 — as it turned into asserting a $ 7M series A — it had just 20 shoppers. It’s now boasting more than 1,000, identify-checking “excessive increase” businesses corresponding to Typeform, TransferWise, Outfittery, GetYourGuide, GoCardless, Hotjar, and CityJet amongst its shoppers, and touting revenue growth of 1,200% year-on-12 months.
Co-founder and CEO Avi Meir tells us the startup is “on tempo” to generate $ 100M in GMV this year.
Meir’s founding idea, again in 2015, changed into to create a rewards program based mostly round dynamic budgeting for enterprise trips. but after conversations with capabilities consumers about their pain-elements, the crew rapidly pivoted to target a broader bundle of company shuttle reserving problems.
The mission now can be summarized as attempting to make the complete enterprise commute adventure suck much less — from booking flights and motels; to admin equipment for managing policies; analytics; client support; all carried out inside what’s billed as a “customer-like adventure” to keep conclusion-clients happy. practically it’s offering conclusion-to-end shuttle administration for its goal company clients.
“trip and finance managers had been annoyed through how they at the moment manage shuttle and looked for an multi functional device that simply WORKS while not having to compare prices with Skyscanner, be redirected to different sites, write 20 emails from side to side with a trip agent to coordinate a simple travel for someone, and endure dangerous user event,” says Meir.
“We understood that in an effort to fix business travel there is no manner around but diving into it head on and create the area’s most advantageous OTA (on-line travel company), combined with the most useful in class admin tools needed so as to control the go back and forth program and a customer grade, sensible user journey that travelers will love. So we grew to become a full blown platform competing head on with the large TMCs (commute management organizations) and the legacy company tools (Amex GBT, Concur, Egencia…).”
He claims TravelPerk’s one-cease business trip shop now has the world’s biggest bookable inventory (“all of the trip agent inventory however also booking.com, Expedia, Skyscanner, Airbnb… essentially any flight/hotel on the cyber web — handiest we’ve that”).
goal users at this stage are SMEs (up to 1,500 personnel), with tech and consulting currently its strongest verticals, even though Meir says it “truly runs the gamut”. whereas the present focus is Europe, with its main markets being the united kingdom, Germany and Spain.
TravelPerk’s enterprise model is freemium — and its pitch is it might probably shop valued clientele more than a fifth in annual company travel expenses vs legacy company tools/commute brokers due to the lack of commissions, free consumer help and so on.
but it additionally presents a top class tier with additional flexibility and perks — similar to company resort rates and a shuttle agent provider for group bookings — for these shoppers who do are looking to pay to improve the adventure.
On the competition front the main rivals are “historical company travel businesses and TMC”, in accordance with Meir, together with better players reminiscent of Egencia (through Expedia) and Concur (SAP enterprise).
“There are just a few startups doing what we’re doing within the U.S. like TripActions, NexTravel, as well as some smaller ones which are stoning up but are in an prior stage,” he notes.
“on the grounds that our first circular… TravelPerk has been experiencing some fabulous boom compared to any tech benchmark i know,” he adds. “We’ve found a better product market healthy than we imagined and grew a great deal faster than planned. It appears like all and sundry is sad with the way they are at the moment booking and managing company travel. Which makes this a $ 1.25 trillion market, able for disruption.”
The series B will be put against scaling “speedy”, with Meir arguing that TravelPerk has landed upon a “rare possibility” to power the market.
“biological growth has been extremely quickly and we have an instantaneous opportunity to scale the company fast, doing what we are doing at this time at a bigger scale,” he says.
Commenting in an announcement, Antoine Nussenbaum, partner at Felix Capital, additionally spies an enormous opportunity. “The corporate trip industry is likely one of the largest world markets yet to be disrupted on-line. At Felix Capital we’ve a excessive conviction about a brand new period of consumerization of commercial enterprise application,” he says.
whereas target global normal companion Shmuel Chafets describes TravelPerk as “very neatly located to be a market chief within the company commute area with a product that makes enterprise commute as seamless and straightforward as very own shuttle”.
“We’re excited to guide such an skilled and dedicated crew that has a robust music record within the travel area,” he adds in a helping remark. “TravelPerk is our first funding in Barcelona. We accept as true with in a pan-European startup ecosystem and we look forward to seeing extra alternatives during this emerging startup hub.”
Flush with fresh funding, the team’s subsequent project is even more recruitment. “We’ll grow our groups throughout with emphasis on engineering, operations and consumer assist. We’re also planning to extend, opening native places of work in four-5 new nations within the upcoming 12 months and a half,” says Meir.
He notes the company has grown from 20 to one hundred employees during the last 12 months already but provides that it’s going to proceed “hiring aggressively”.
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