INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
investment thesis of using technology to offer customers more and much better choice
Booking corporate travel is unnecessarily time-consuming, expensive and burdensome compared to leisure travel
Avi and team have capitalised on this opportunity to build the leading European challenger by focusing on a product-led solution, and we
disruption because legacy business travel booking platforms are both lacking in options and roundly hated for being slow and horrible to use
(Hi Concur!)Helping business save time and money using a slick, consumer-style trip booking platform that both packs in options and makes
business travelers feel good about the booking process (i.e
Down the road, it also has its eye on generating a data-based revenue stream via paid-tier trip analytics.Currently it reports booking
revenues growing at 700 percent year on year
on track to complete bookings for one million travelers by next year
new funding will be put toward market expansion.And there is at least the possibility, according to Meir, that TravelPerk could actively
though, with a chunk of the Series C going to establish a number of new offices across the region.Having more local bases to better serve
(Which, in Europe, means having staff who can speak the local language.)He also quips about the need for a travel business to serve up
by using tech tools to slickly connect on-the-road customers with actual people who can quickly and smartly grapple with and solve problems,
to push close to 300 within 18 months), as well as continued investment on the product front, including in the mobile app, which was a late
addition, only arriving this year.The TravelPerk mobile app offers handy stuff like a one-stop travel itinerary, flight updates and a chat
travelers, as nice-to-have extras
offering a clean-looking, consumer-style interface intended to do for business travel booking feels what Slack has done for work chat, the
as Booking.com and Expedia.The inventory also includes Airbnb accommodation (not just traditional hotels), while other partners on the
This mode of transport is an important component of the European business travel market, where rail infrastructure is dense, highly
developed and often very high-speed
able to offer direct bookings for via its platform.On the product side, the team is also working on integrating travel and expenses
of new offices around the region near where some of its bigger customers are based
Beginning in London, with Berlin, Amsterdam and Paris slated to follow soon.Picking investors for the long haulWhat does the team attribute
comfortable supporting the business for the long haul, rather than pushing for a quick sale
now when we release a feature it goes immediately into the hands of hundreds of thousands of travelers that use it every month
