How this Recent Corporate Travel Management Startup Raised $600000 Check out Tripeur's fundraising journey.
By Rahul R
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
With today's venture capitalists and angel investors taking unconventional approaches and channelizing investments in ventures that solve actual plaguing needs of society, Tripeur founded in 2015 in Bangalore exactly falls into this category. This startup raised $600,000 in a Pre-Series A round led by Japan-based Incubate Fund. Now, attracting overseas investors should naturally grab eyeballs.
The Funding Journey of Tripeur – the numbers
The corporate travel management venture has raised close to $1million between its seed and Pre-Series A rounds. The latest round, of funding represented the Pre-Series A round of $600,000, was led by Japan-based Incubate Found; which also saw participation from a few angel investors and those such as Rajul Garg who had earlier participated in the Seed round.
For the record, the company is backed by reputed investors including Incubate Fund (from Japan), Rajul Garg, Grace Techno Ventures LLP, and key industry veterans as Angel investors
Key attributes to obtaining funding
As per the company, Tripeur sought help from angel investors who participated in the seed round, along with industry contacts of the industry contacts of the founders; coupled with the inbound investor interest.
The key attributes that caught Incubate Fund's eye were Tripeur's team profile, platform capabilities, maturity, stability, and the company's business traction. Also, the fact that the company's revenue models that generated healthy revenue in significantly short period of time since inception, and positive unit economics of the venture offered confidence to investors. The company also reportedly surpassed its revenue targets, set at the seed round, six months in advance.
Future fundraising and growth plans – Tripeur
Tripeur plans to grow its transaction volumes by 10X by the end of 2018, in comparison to that of 2017-end. The company also claims to have managed to double its transaction volume in February 2018, compared to January 2018.
Tripeur also has plans to raise Series A funds during mid-2018, the amount of funds here would be in tune with its growth targets and projections.
How new ventures can raise funds – from Tripeur's point of view
"Focus on your product or solution's ability to solve a deep-rooted problem, and look to on board (at least) a few customers and generate revenues while in the bootstrap mode," stated Thiagrajan Rajagopalan who is Founder and CEO at Tripeur to Entrepreneur India.
Thiagarajan's statement re-iterates the need for developing a core team possessing complimentary skill-sets, along with a well thought-out roadmap. If these areas are covered, then funding should be a matter of time.
"Tripeur is Redefining Business Travel with a technology platform built with the latest Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms. Our objective is to provide a frictionless travel management experience to all the key stakeholders - travelling executive, travel desk admin and finance team. There exists tremendous opportunity in this space, and we would like to play a key role in developing the ecosystem through our 3rd generation, end-to-end technology platform" signs-off Rajagopalan.
