Travelyaari, a Bangalore based online ticketing platform, has raised $3 million in a latest funding round. Along with its existing investor GVFL Ltd., some other undisclosed investors have also participated.
GVFL invested in this bridge round through its Golden Gujarat Growth Fund I, which is a sector agnostic fund. The newly raised capital will be used by the company for its expansion and marketing efforts. It currently has 200 employees. With new funding, it is now looking to triple its employee count.
Gujarat Venture Finance Ltd. (GVFL) had invested in the company around five years go. Several media reports suggests that Travelyaari has been looking to raise funding since long time. However, it has not been able to attract new investors.
While the company was founded in 2007 by Aurvind Lama and Partha Sinha, it started commercial operation from 2008. Till now, the company has raised around Rs 20 crore from Bennett & Coleman and Company Ltd, GVFL and Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE).
The startup claims, that its backend system for fleet management and other tasks is being used by more than 1,600 operators for their day-to-day operations. It also supports annual transaction volume of more than Rs 3,000 crore.
Besides Travelyaari, the company provides services through its online products like BusCRS, IamGDS, BusTicketBooking API. Apart from online ticketing facility, the startup also provides technology platforms for bus operators for ticket bookings. It is now planning to launch cabs and automobile bookings service.
In December 2015, it had a network of more than 2,100 bus service providers with over 1,43,000 bus options per day on 45,000 routes.
Sanjay Randhar, MD, GVFL, says that bus travel is Rs 80,000 crore industry and only 10 per cent of bus tickets are currently sold online. He believes that the trend is changing at a rapid pace and online sales can contribute to more than 40 per cent sales in the next 3-4 years.
In the space of online bus ticket booking service, Travelyaari competes with the likes of redBus and PayTM.
