TravelPerk Announces $44m Series C Investment Led by Kinnevik to Transform $1.3 Trillion Business Travel Market

BARCELONA, Spain, October 16, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

• TravelPerk is accelerating growth with Series C investment including from Kinnevik, Yuri Milner and Tom Stafford, and the opening of a new London office - with bases in Berlin, Amsterdam and Paris soon to follow
• TravelPerk is a simple, smart, easy-to-use platform which allows teams to manage trips from booking to accounting all in one place - using the world's largest global travel inventory to take the pain out of business travel
• TravelPerk is Europe's fastest growing 'Software as a Service' company, and is on track to complete seamless bookings for one million travellers next year

Barcelona-based startup TravelPerk has secured $44 million in Series C funding from some of the most successful technology investors including Kinnevik, Yuri Milner and Tom Stafford.

     (Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/767357/TravelPerk_Logo.jpg )

     (Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/767358/TravelPerk_founders.jpg )

According to the Global Business Travel Association, 50% of business travel happens outside of company policy, often because existing platforms are outdated, can't offer the choice or prices of consumer equivalents, and require travel managers to endure multiple sites, emails and calls to manage a single trip.

TravelPerk is solving this problem for hundreds of thousands of travellers from some of the world's most influential companies including Uber and Transferwise - cutting the time needed to manage a trip from 3 or 4 hours to just 10 minutes and saving companies over 20% in annual travel costs.

TravelPerk's platform hosts the world's largest bookable inventory, bringing all the necessary tools and resources from booking to accounting into one simple, consumer-standard interface - incorporating cars, trains, flights and hotels from a wide range of major providers including Booking.com, Expedia and Airbnb.

TravelPerk CEO Avi Meir said: "We believe business travel should be as simple as personal travel - if not easier. As businesses grow beyond borders, organising trips is one of the most painful and unnecessary obstacles they face to expanding."

"TravelPerk is breaking new ground to propel business travel into the 21st century, disrupting a mammoth and outdated $1.3 trillion market - ensuring distance is never a barrier to future growth." 

In this latest round, the company is also being supported by existing investors including Felix Capital, Target Global, Spark Capital, LocalGlobe, Suntone and Amplo, who back market-changers including Slack, Trello, Farfetch and Delivery Hero.

Since being founded in 2015 by CEO Avi Meir and CPO Javier Suarez, TravelPerk has increased revenues by 700% growth year on year, and has now raised nearly $75m in total funding. This new injection of funding will equip TravelPerk to expand into new markets, enlarge its client base by working more with small enterprises and augment its technology offering.

Chris Bischoff, Senior Investment Director, Kinnevik, said: "We are excited to invest in TravelPerk, a company that fits perfectly into our investment thesis of using technology to offer customers more and much better choice. Booking corporate travel is unnecessarily time-consuming, expensive and burdensome compared to leisure travel. Avi and team have capitalised on this opportunity to build the leading European challenger by focusing on a product-led solution, and we look forward to supporting their future growth."

• For UK: Having tripled the size of its team in the past year, TravelPerk is now opening its first office in the UK. The UK business travel market was worth $50 billion in 2017, and this initial investment will allow TravelPerk to simplify travel for customers such as Aesop, Bowers & Wilkins, Adyen and Farfetch
  
• For Germany: Having tripled the size of its team in the past year, TravelPerk is also announcing that it will open a new office in Germany by the end of this year, the biggest business travel market in Europe at $72bn. TravelPerk is growing the fastest in Germany out of all its geographies, where it already serves businesses including GetYourGuide, Adjust and Outfittery
  
• For France: Having tripled the size of its team in the past year, TravelPerk is also announcing that it will open a new office in France by the end of this year, where it already serves businesses including Mirakl, Aircall, Condeco and Ykone
  
• For Spain: TravelPerk has tripled the size of its Barcelona-based team in the past year from 50 to 150, serving customers including Globo & Typeform. The company is now opening its first office in the UK and with bases in Berlin, Amsterdam and Paris soon to follow

SOURCE TravelPerk