Bangalore-based AxisRooms Travel Distribution Solutions has raised an undisclosed amount in funding from Mumbai-based early-stage VC fund Seedfund. AxisRooms’ room management software enables hotels to update and share their inventory status with agents and portals in real time.
The development was first reported by The Economic Times. Bharti Jacob, partner, Seedfund, mentioned that the investment is in line with Seedfund’s efforts to invest in startups that are organising the unorganised market. Jacob will be joining the board at AxisRooms.
The startup was founded in 2009 by Anil Kumar Prasanna and Ravi Taneja. Prior to AxisRooms, Prasanna was CEO at Travel HQ, while Taneja was senior manager - product development at VIA World. As of now, the startup offers three products that include AR Connect, a platform for hotels to manage inventory and pricing with all online travel portals; AR Corp, a solution for corporates to manage the contracts, payment terms and hotel stay reports; and AR Book, a booking engine that allows hotels to take direct bookings via the traffic coming on the site.
Talking to Techcircle.in Taneja, co-founder and COO, AxisRooms, said the capital will be used to enhance the existing products and services and acquiring more customers across India. “We are looking at enhancing our products for the hotels. Products will be our first focus which is why we would first look at expanding the product team before the business development team,†he said. He said in last 12 months the firm has added 265 hotels as their paying clients. Their plan is to take this number to 5,000 in 18-24 months. The startup has multiple revenue streams based on fee sharing and subscriptions. “Going forward, we believe major conversion will be from the fee-sharing model,†Taneja said.
Seedfund comes in at a very early stage and typically invests between $1 million and $5 million. One of its portfolio startups, Redbus recently scripted one of the biggest exits in the Internet sector.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)