Chinmay Bidkar
21 September 2017, India:
Online travel portal Yatra has raised $15.4 million in venture debt from InnoVen Capital India Pvt. Ltd. The fresh funds will be utilized to meet the working capital required by Yatra to grow further and expand its offerings across geographies.
Gurgaon-headquartered Yatra was founded in August 2006 by Sabina Chopra, Manish Amin and Dhruv Shringi. It provides a full range of travel-related services such as domestic and international air ticketing, hotel booking, homestays, holiday packages, bus ticketing, rail ticketing, activities, attractions and ancillary services.
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“After having raised $92 million through our Nasdaq listing in December 2016, this debt funding provides us additional capital for our growth needs,” Yatra group CFO Alok Vaish said.
“Through InnoVen’s cross-border funding capability and our confidence in Yatra’s management team, we were able to meet its financing needs across different geographies,” said Chin Chao, interim CEO, InnoVen Capital India, and CEO, InnoVen Capital South East Asia. In 2013, InnoVen Capital had invested $4 million in Yatra.
“Venture debt is not just for early-stage companies anymore. In 2016, we saw a lot of pullbacks in terms of funding. This year, we have seen a slow uptick in funding. We have a lot of deals with Indian companies in the pipeline since a lot are planning to expand overseas,” said Chao, who is based in Singapore.
Yatra claims to have tie-ups with over 65,000 hotels in India and nearly 500K hotels across the globe. The 11-year-old company is backed by IDG Ventures, Vertex Venture Management, Norwest Venture Partners, and other investors.
Meanwhile, Yatra’s fierce competitor online travel firm MakeMyTrip recently raised $330 million in the round of funding led by its existing investors Naspers and Ctrip. MakeMyTrip was founded in 2000 as an online travel company by Deep Kalra and Keyur Joshi. The company “holds close to 25% market share of the OTA hotel booking segment” as per the report by NewsBytes. (Image- Yatra.com)
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