Kahini Chakraborty – Mumbai
iTraveller.com, a Bengaluru based online travel platform founded in early 2012, plans to raise US$ 10 million in the next four-five months, as part of its expansion plans. The company allows users to customise holidays in over 450 destinations worldwide. Speaking exclusively to Express TravelWorld, Shiju Radhakrishnan, founder and CEO, iTraveller.com stated, “In the initial years we bootstrapped for a while and then raised around US$ three lakh as angel funding during 2013-14. We raised US$ one million of Series A funding in February 2015. We plan to raise another US$ 10 million in the next four-five months time.”
By the end of this calendar year the company aims to have a monthly gross sales value of Rs two crore by offering 200 regions and more than 1500 destinations. “By the end of 2020 we want to achieve an average monthly gross sales value of Rs 500 crore. Though the figures look ambitious it is only 0.8 per cent of the total current holidays booking market size,” he informed adding that, “There are no direct head-on competitors as of now for iTraveller.com, but as far as discovery of the destinations are concerned we have TripHobo and Tripoto. For transactions we have TravelTriangle. For hotel bookings we have OyoRooms and Stayzilla. For package booking without the scope of much customisation we have SOTC, Thomas Cook, etc. For package booking with moderate customisation we have MakeMyTrip, Cleartrip, etc. But there are none for customised package discovery, creation and booking, that too online.”