RoomCentral raises $2M for hotel booking play

RoomCentral, a cloud-based booking engine and property management platform for hotels, has raised $2 million in its first round of funding from angel investor Karanpal Singh.

With RoomCentral's platform, hotels can drive direct booking on their own websites and cut down on commissions shared with online travel agencies.

RoomCentral, owned and operated by Bangalore-based Hostra Systems Pvt Ltd, is expected to use the money raised to expand its reach and increase marketing spends for getting more hospitality clients, as per a press statement.

"With RoomCentral, we envision empowering property owners with the ability to increase direct revenues, eliminate capital expenditure, minimize operating spends and overheads, and increase staff productivity - all while eliminating dependence on multiple vendors and interfaces," said Atul Prabhu, founder and CEO, RoomCentral.

Singh is the managing director of Nameh Hotels & Resorts. He is also director at Suave Ventures.

RoomCentral, which was launched this year by Prabhu and Rupam Mazumdar, would compete with the likes of Commeasure Solution, Djubo and other players. The platform allows properties to sell, manage and distribute their room inventory in real-time by unifying all the property's functions on a single, easy to use interface. The company's target is small and medium size properties.

It has a team of 16 members and claims to work with about 50 properties.

Recently, online travel company ibiboGroup, part of South African media conglomerate Naspers Ltd, acquired a minority equity stake in cloud-based hotel technology startup Djubo.com Pvt Ltd for an undisclosed amount.

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