Accel Partners joins Jungle Ventures in seed round funding of new-generation OTA Travelmob

Four-month-old online travel marketplace Travelmob, which is backed by Singapore-based early-stage VC fund Jungle Ventures, has disclosed it has another investor on board – Accel Partners.

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 hotel stay. 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.

Jungle Ventures led a $1 million seed round of funding in the startup earlier this year but as Accel is also on board, it has committed a part of the seed round as well. Prashanth Prakash of Accel has confirmed to Techcircle.in that it has put in additional capital for the existing round which will make the round slightly bigger than $1 million.

Earlier, Turochas Fuad, CEO and co-founder of Travelmob, said that the company would use the funding for growth and expansion across the region.

Travelmob was founded by Fuad and 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)