Travel e-commerce platform Travelspice has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Bangalore-based early-stage investor Eagle10 Ventures, a company statement said.
“Two-thirds of the fund will be deployed for marketing and the rest will go towards product development,†Ramu Kallepalli, co-founder of Travelspice, told VCCircle.
Founded by Kallepalli, Prashant Mitta and Ankit Manglik this February, Travelspice Now Pvt. Ltd works with 3-star to 5-star hotels in more than 212 cities across India and six cities outside the country. The Bangalore-based startup, which targets brand-agnostic and value-conscious consumers, claims to provide discounts on hotel bookings. Hotels benefit, too, as they can fill perishable room inventory with fully paid and non-refundable bookings.
"The travel market in India is set to grow exponentially and we feel Travelspice through their opaque platform has the potential to capture a good chunk of this market," said Pramod Dsouza, co-founder of Eagle10 Ventures.
Kallepalli has founded two other startups, based in Chicago and Hyderabad, before co-founding Travelspice.
Travel-tech has been one of the favourite sectors of investors of late.
Last month, branded budget hotel marketplace OYO Rooms, which is operated by Oravel Stays Pvt. Ltd, closed a $250-million round led by existing investor SoftBank Group. Bangalore-based Ruptub Solutions Pvt. Ltd, which operates Treebo Hotels, had raised Rs 112 crore in Series B funding led by Bertelsmann India Investments.
Last June, Gurgaon-based Casa2 Stays Pvt. Ltd, which runs FabHotels, had raised $8 million in its Series A round from a group of investors including existing investors Accel Partners and Qualcomm Ventures.
In May last year, Matrix Partners and Nexus Ventures invested an additional $13.5 million in Stayzilla, the Chennai-based budget hotel and homestay aggregator that shut down earlier this year. In March 2016, Room On Call had raised $2 million in a funding round led by on-vehicle advertising company CASHurDRIVE Marketing Pvt. Ltd.