Singapore- and Mumbai-based Goomo Holdings Services India Private Limited, which operates online travel and holiday booking platform Goomo, has raised $50 million (Rs 321.6 crore) from Mauritius-based private equity firm Emerging India.
The company will use the funds to build its online platform, products, marketing, and to establish its offline partner network, it said in a statement.
Goomo, which was earlier an offline venture Orbit Corporate and Leisure Travels Ltd, was launched in March after Emerging India acquired a majority stake in the company in November 2015. Orbit has been operating in the travel space for 27 years, the company statement said.
“Goomo is being built ground up to be an omni-channel platform that will facilitate corporate and consumer travel bookings across online and offline channels,†Varun Gupta, chief executive of the company, said.
In February this year, The Hindu Business Line reported that Emerging India had invested about $180 million in acquiring Orbit Corporate and Leisure Travels. It is not clear whether the $50 million raised is part of Emerging India’s $180-million investment. An e-mail query sent in this regard to Goomo went unanswered at the time of filing this report. The copy will be updated as and when the responses are received.
Goomo currently offers its services across three business segments of travel: consumer, corporate and B2B. This includes booking flights, holiday packages (both domestic and international), listing and travel packages for trade fairs across industries. The company is expected to add hotel bookings, buses, trains and visas to its online platform soon.
Emerging India is a growth-stage investor that invests across multiple asset classes, including long-only equities, fixed income, credit strategies, private equity and fund of funds. In India, the investment fund has so far largely focused on capital markets.
Recent deals in the online travel services space include Nasdaq-listed MakeMyTrip Ltd, one of the biggest players in the segment, which last month raised $330 million (Rs 2,116 crore) from South African technology group Naspers, Chinese travel firm Ctrip.com and other investors.
In March this year, Gurgaon-based Le Travenues Technology Pvt Ltd, which runs online travel search engine ixigo, raised $15 million (about Rs 100 crore) in a Series B funding round led by Sequoia Capital.