Travel recommendation portal WeAreHolidays raises funding from Matrix, others

Delhi-based WAH Holidays Pvt Ltd, owner of WeAreHolidays, an online marketplace for customised holiday packages, has secured an undisclosed amount in funding from Matrix Partners India for a significant minority stake. Existing investors including Blume Ventures and GSF Superangel Investors also participated in this round.

WeAreHolidays will use the funds to grow its business and deepen its technology & analytics expertise, the company said in a statement.

The firm had previously raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Blume Ventures, Mumbai Angels, Sachin Bhatia (co-founder of MakeMyTrip) and GSF India.

The startup was founded in 2011 by Deepak Wadhwa, Harkirat Singh (both former product managers at MakeMyTrip), along with Mohit Piplani, a former consultant at Michael Page International. WeAreHolidays enables travellers to plan and book their holidays online. It leverages its proprietary recommendation platform to help create and plan holiday itineraries and services them through its supplier marketplace.

"Indians travelling overseas for leisure alone is a $5-7 billion market and is growing at 40 per cent annually. Ten per cent of this comprises complex customised holidays, a segment which is growing much faster than other segments as travellers seek more personalisation and control over their holidays. We believe there is a huge opportunity to leverage technology to re-define the experience of leisure travellers in an industry which has traditionally been very slow at adopting technology & new business models," said Deepak Wadhwa, CEO of WeAreHolidays.

"The number of Indians travelling overseas is set to rise from 17 million to around 50 million by 2020, making it the second largest outbound travel market globally, next only to China. It is our privilege to be associated with Deepak Wadhwa, Harkirat Singh and Mohit Piplani, the co-founders of WeAreHolidays, who have built a unique managed marketplace model to best serve the progressive Indian traveller," said Tarun Davda, vice president at Matrix India.

Matrix 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, early and early-growth stages. It has backed various companies operating in the consumer technology space that include Quikr (online classifieds), Olacabs (cab marketplace), Stayzilla (stays marketplace), LimeRoad (social commerce marketplace), Mswipe (mobile POS), Newshunt (local language mobile platform) and U2opia (social mobile apps), among others.

Matrix Partners has a global network of funds investing in the US, China and India with $3 billion under management.

Recently, Pune-based JoGuru Inc, the company that owns and operates the online trip planning platform TriphHobo.com, raised under Rs 20 crore ($3.5 million) in its Series A round of funding from Kalaari Capital, an early-stage tech-focused VC fund.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)