Three-month-old OTA Travelmob raises $1M seed funding from Jungle Ventures, others

Three-month-old travel marketplace Travelmob has raised $1 million in seed funding from Singapore-based Jungle Ventures and some private investors.

Set up in July this year, Singapore-based Travelmob is a social marketplace aiming to link travellers (called guests) with people (called hosts) who offer vacation rentals for short stay. Travelmob's objective is to become a one-stop shop for global travellers who want to experience local living, in contrast to luxurious hotels. The focus is essentially on the Asia-Pacific region and the listing at Travelmob is free for hosts while guests can book those places online and share their experience on the portal after their trips.

Turochas Fuad, CEO and co-founder of Travelmob, said, "Our mission is to lead the social stay market in the Asia-Pacific and since the launch, we have been making tremendous progress towards that goal. Travelmob is delighted to have Jungle Ventures lead this round of funding and looks forward to working with our investors to drive further growth and expansion across the region."

Anurag Srivastava, founder and managing partner of Jungle Ventures, said, "We are excited to lead in this round of funding. The Asia-Pacific is the fastest growing region for tourism and its online vacation rental market is set to soar over the next few years. Travelmob is in the right place, at the right time. Coupled with a solid business plan and a seasoned team with strong regional experience, Travelmob has the right ingredients to be successful and is well poised to be a market leader."

Travelmob was earlier featured in Techcircle.in's feature on the new breed of social OTAs. It was founded by Fuad, along with Prashant Kirtane. A BBA from the University of Texas at Austin, Fuad had earlier worked as the managing director of Skype Asia, heading its business expansion and partnerships across the Asia-Pacific region. He had also worked with American Management Systems, Sun Microsystem, Contivo Inc. and Yahoo. Kirtane had served as the senior director (engineering) at Yahoo's video division globally and also worked with Tata Infotech.

(Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal)