Hotel booking enabler Commeasure raises $1M seed funding led by Jungle Ventures

Commeasure Solution India Pvt. Ltd., which runs a B2B platform helping hotels develop their direct booking systems, has raised $1 million (Rs 6.2 crore) in seed funding led by Singapore-based early stage investor Jungle Ventures, according to a press release.

The proceeds from the funding will be used to expand its presence in South-east Asia as well as for continuing its growth strategy in India.

The startup was co-founded by Amit Saberwal (CEO) and Asheesh Saxena (CTO) in July 2014. Saberwal and Saxena have both worked with MakeMyTrip Ltd prior to founding Commeasure.

Saberwal was chief business officer of MakeMyTrip based at Singapore. In his previous roles, he was the sales & marketing director with The Park Hotels. His partner Saxena was senior vice president - product development and engineering with online community for researchers Knimbus and has also served as director (technology development - online hotels) for MakeMyTrip. He also has international experience in delivering hotel and travel technology solutions to organisations like Lastminute.com, Zuji and British Midland.

"Our customer portfolio of over 500 large and small hotels across India, literally from Kashmir to the Andaman Islands and in SE Asia, confirms the need and efficacy of our offering. I envisage Commeasure being implemented in over 5,000 hotel properties over the next couple of years," said Saberwal.

The round also saw participation from a public market fund, Saberwal told The Economic Times without disclosing the name and further details on stake picked by investors.

The startup provides a plug and play solution to hotels, resorts, B&Bs and service apartments across the Asia-Pacific region including India. Some of its current customers include Sarovar Hotels, Mapple Hotels, Jukaso Hotels, Clarks, Classic Group and Grand Mumtaz Group among others.

Singapore-based Jungle Ventures is an active VC fund that has a good presence in India. This is the second known investment by the fund in the country this year.  In January, it invested $1 million in Social Audience Pvt Ltd, a company behind the data intelligence startup Tookitaki.

Around the same time, it had exited ZipDial Mobile Solutions Pvt Ltd, which runs a missed call-based customer engagement platform ZipDial, selling its stake to Twitter as part of a strategic sale.

It had earlier invested in micro-lending platform Milaap, big data firm Crayon Data, online healthcare startup Klinify, grocery e-tailer Ekstop and mobile payments platform Pokkt.

"APAC's fragmented lodging landscape still suffers from low online penetration compared to Europe and US, which suggests that it holds significant opportunity for growth," said Amit Anand, founding partner at Jungle Ventures.