Hotel booking site Stayzilla.com raises Series A funding from Matrix Partners India

Chennai-based Inasra Technologies Pvt Ltd, the company that owns and operates Stayzilla.com, a hotel booking site, has raised its first institutional round of equity funding from Matrix Partners India. The transaction terms, including the funding amount, are not undisclosed.

The capital will be used to expand the team, increase partner network to over 15,000 hotels and enhance the customer service operations.

"The online hotel booking industry has been at a nascent stage for the last few years. It is now at an inflection point and I expect 40 per cent of all hotel bookings in India to be done online in five years," Stayzilla co-founder and CEO Yogi Vasupal said in a statement.

Stayzilla was co-founded in 2005 and was earlier known as Inasra.com; it was rebranded as Stayzilla in 2010. Unlike popular OTAs like MakeMyTrip which offer both ticket booking and hotel reservation, StayZilla focuses solely on room bookings.

The company has partnered with a network of over 6,000 hotels in more than 750 cities. In March last year, the company had raised $0.5 million from Indian Angel Network (IAN). Ravindra Krishnappa is the board representative of IAN at Stayzilla. Amitabh Shrivastava is the lead investor from IAN.

"Stayzilla operates at the intersection of two important trends—increasing penetration of hotel bookings online by consumers and increasing number of hotels from tier II and III cities coming online. It is our privilege to be associated with Yogi Vasupal, Sachit Singhi and Rupal Yogendra, the co-founders of Stayzilla.com, who have built a unique model to best serve the customers and the hotel operators and scale this marketplace," said Avnish Bajaj, co-founder and managing director, Matrix India.

Matrix Partners India is an investment firm with Rs 3,000 crore under management. The firm invests in companies targeting the Indian consumer market at the seed and early growth stages, with initial investments ranging from Rs 1 crore to Rs 75 crore.

The firm has invested in tech companies like Quikr (online classifieds), Limeroad (social shopping for women), Ver Se (mobile utilitarian applications), U2opia (social mobile apps) and Twist Mobile (mobile games). Besides these it has put in money in other sectors such as healthcare and education.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)