Guiddoo World Travels Pvt Ltd, which runs travel technology site Guiddoo, has raised $300,000 (Rs 1.9 crore) in a pre-Series A round from a bunch of individual investors.
The round saw participation from existing investors Pawan Borle, senior vice-president at Fly Dubai, and Team Ducab human resources head Nirmal Singh. New investors Manish Prasad, Vineet Varma, Nick Haulkoury and Abhai S. Rao also participated in this round, the company said in a statement.
The funds will be utilized to beef up Guiddoo’s product and technology infrastructure. It is also looking to build a pan-India distribution network for its tours, activities and holidays products.
Founded in 2014 by Nidhi Varma, Vineet Budki, Prashant Choudhary and Biswajeet Karmakar, Guiddoo started as a tour guide app, but pivoted last year into an in-destination platform offering tours and activities, dining, shopping and entertainment options for the Indian international traveller.
The app is available on both Android and iOS platforms, besides on B2C- and B2B-focused web platforms.
Guiddoo offers its services across 15 international destinations through institutional partners, including Cleartrip and Yatra, and has a tie up with over 2,000 travel agent partners. The company claims to have handled over 10,000 customers with over 40,000 activities in the past one year. “Guiddoo has seen 12-times growth since its adopted the in-destination experience model, which is an estimated market of $20 billion," said Budki.
In June 2015, tthe company had raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from a clutch of angel investors.
Recently, Singapore- and Mumbai-based Goomo Holdings Services India Pvt. Ltd, which operates online travel and holiday booking platform Goomo, had raised $50 million from Mauritius-based private equity firm Emerging India.
In March, Gurgaon-based Le Travenues Technology Pvt. Ltd, which runs online travel search engine ixigo, had raised $15 million in a Series B round led by Sequoia Capital.