Zizoo, a reserving.com for boats, sails for brand new markets with $7.4M on board

 

Berlin-primarily based Zizoo — a startup which self describes as booking.com for boats — has nabbed a €6.5 million (~$ 7.4M) collection A to aid extra millennials find holiday yachts to clutter about taking selfies in.

Zizoo says its series A — which became led by using Revo Capital, with participation from new investors together with Coparion, Check24 Ventures and PUSH Ventures — become “significantly oversubscribed”.

existing buyers including MairDumont Ventures, aws Founders Fund, Axel Springer Digital Ventures and Russmedia foreign additionally participated in the circular.

We first came throughout Zizoo some three years ago when they won our pitching competition in Budapest.

We’re happy to assert they’ve come an extended means for the reason that, with a team that’s now 60-people strong, and enterprise relationships with ~1,500 constitution companies — serving up more than 21,000 boats for hire, throughout 30 international locations, by way of a search and book platform that caters to a full latitude of “crusing experiences”, from skilled sailor to amateur and, on the pricing entrance, luxurious to finances.

Registered clients passed the a hundred,000 mark this yr, in accordance with founder and CEO Anna Banicevic. She additionally tells us that income boom has been 2.5x year-on-year for the past three years.

Commenting on the sequence A in an announcement, Revo Capital’s managing director Cenk Bayrakdar stated: “The yacht charter market is among the most underserved verticals in the trip business regardless of its massive expertise. We agree with in Zizoo’s successful future as a leading SaaS-enabled industry.”

the brand new money might be put towards becoming the company — together with with the aid of increasing into new markets; plus product building and recruitment across the board.

“We’re seeking to beef up our presence within the US, where we’ve considered the largest YoY boom whereas additionally extend our stock in scorching places corresponding to Greece, Spain and the Caribbean,” says Banicevic on market enlargement. “we will also be aggressively pushing markets equivalent to France and Spain where consumers reveal a growing to be pastime in boat vacations.”

Zizoo is intending to hire forty extra personnel over the direction of the next yr — to satisfy what it dubs “the booming demand for crusing experiences, in particular among millennials”.

So why do millennials love boating vacations so an awful lot? Zizoo says the 20-forty age range makes up the “majority” of its client.

Banicevic reckons the reply is they’re after a slice of ‘cost effective luxurious’.

“After the recent boom of the cruising industry, millennials are smartly popular with the concept of vacations at sea. however, crusing vacations (yachting) are tons greater fitting to the millennial’s attempt for independence, event and experiences off the beaten course,” she suggests.

“Yachting is a transforming into style no longer reserved for the rich and famous — and millennials desire a bit of that. On our platform, users can ebook a boat holiday for as little as £25 per person per nighttime (here is an example of a sailboat in Croatia).”

On the competition entrance, she says the leading competition is the offline sphere (“the place 90% of enterprise is carried out through a number of significant and a lot of small travel brokers”).

but a couple of rival structures have emerged “in the ultimate few years” — and right here she reckons Zizoo has managed to outgrow the startup competition “thanks to our interesting vertically integrated enterprise model, offering suppliers a booking management system and making it easy for the person to ebook a boat holiday”.