TripFactory in Talks to Raise at Least $100 Million

BANGALORE, September 12, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

TripFactory, a customized holiday platform, is in talks to raise $100 million in Series-B or second round of institutional funding, a senior executive of the company told Mint India, a leading financial newspaper. TripFactory was co-founded by Vinay Gupta, Amit Aggarwal and Varun Gupta in 2015. Vinay Gupta and Amit Aggarwal had earlier co-found and sold Via.com to Ebix.

"We are looking to raise a $100 million or even more, depending on the kind of investors we can attract," said Vinay Gupta, co-founder of the online holiday company. Vinay Gupta added that TripFactory is in talks with various funds based out of the Silicon Valley, China and Japan. The online travel marketplace founders will also be engaging with investors who backed their previous startup Via.com.

"We will obviously go back to engage with investors that had shown confidence in us as founders, when we were fundraising for our previous venture via.com, namely Kaalari, Sequoia, Expedia, Priceline, Naspers, Temasek, Premji and new ones like Google, Microsoft, and others," said Vinay Gupta.

In 2015, the company had raised around $10 million in a Series A Funding from Aarin Capital Partners led by former Infosys Ltd board member T.V. Mohandas Pai and Manipal Group chairman Dr. Ranjan Pai.

"It's ironic. Travel is an information industry with Zero-IT, it's just oceans of people everywhere, misinformation in short. All it has seen is a little bit of software automation, more like old car rental companies using software, before Uber came," said Vinay Gupta.

"We questioned why there is no large holiday company globally. You have to go a few 100 years back and say where did it all start, and then we can innovate. You cannot try making the frying pan better, like the rest, to come up with a microwave. It meant redefining everything; building the world's First Full stack holiday company. The tech platform we built, like AWS, to sell holidays world over creating the first truly integrated global holiday company with network effects worth 100's of billions of dollars," said Vinay Gupta.

TripFactory is looking to scale up using an omni-channel; goal is to sell 60k-100k holidays a day.

"You cannot reach India without building scale offline. At present, 1,000-offline travel businesses in 143 cities have done non-refundable registrations, plan is to reach 25,000 partners across 1000 towns/cities," said Vinay Gupta. 

Vinay Gupta added the company is looking to hire around 400 people and set up offices in various cities across the globe. New offices in Dubai, Singapore, Manila, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Hong Kong later this year as part of its global expansion plans.

TripFactory is official partners with Jet Airways, Go Air and key partners with Indigo, Cathay and other carriers to cash in on the customized holiday packages platform, Vinay Gupta added.

Companies like TripFactory are looking to cash in on the Indian tourist travel boom, as more and more Indians are increasingly spending a larger share of their income on travel.

Management consulting firm Praxis Global, in a report in April, said that the online travel market in the country, India, is expected to touch $13.6 billion by 2021 and will account for almost 43% of the total travel category in the country, led by flight and hotel aggregators. India's online travel market stood at $5.71 billion in 2015, according to the firm. The report said most of the growth in the Indian travel market would come from the increasing penetration of international flight and hotel bookings offered by online portals.

Indian consumers are expected to devote almost 4% of their wallet spends on travel, Praxis said in the report.

About TripFactory 

TripFactory is the largest holiday store online where consumers can buy their holidays the way they want either by customizing online themselves or seek assistance by talking to experts who can plan for them. TripFactory was established to solve the problem of selling Holidays. Holidays is a complex industry, with many possibilities and complexities, and the Holiday Industry in India is growing like wild-fire and everyone today is planning a Holiday. We believe consumers should get the largest choice and best prices with the best of find and discovery tools so that finding and booking the perfect holiday becomes very easy. For more information, visit http://www.tripfactory.com/ .

Media Contact:
Sachin Keni
[email protected]
ORN Trip Factory Pvt. Ltd.