Corporate travel management portal Tripeur raises $600K pre-Series A round

Shorebird Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which runs corporate travel management platform Tripeur, has raised a $600,000 (Rs 3.90 crore) pre-Series A round led by Japan-based Incubate Fund.

Existing investors, including early-stage investor Rajul Garg and a few other angels, also participated in the funding round.

Tripeur had secured an undisclosed amount in a seed round led by Grace Grace Techno Ventures LLP in the last quarter of 2016.

According to a company statement, Tripeur will utilise the capital to fund its innovations in artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, and drive efficiency. It also aims to grow its revenue 10 times by the end of the calendar year.

Tripeur also announced the appointment of former Via.com senior executive Manish Raj as its co-founder and chief business officer.

Founded by Thiagarajan Rajagopalan and Sajit Chacko in 2015, the Bengaluru-based company's commercial operations were launched in mid-2017.

“We are excited to lead the corporate travel space into the third generation by deploying latest innovations in artificial intelligence, machine learning and personalisation in various aspects of corporate travel space,” said Rajagopalan, adding that the company had doubled its revenue in the past 12 months, far exceeding the milestones set during the seed round.

Tripeur is a one-stop shop for all processes related to business travel and expense management. It offers a host of services, including raising a trip request, getting approval, hotel bookings and understanding the business policy. For the administration and the finance department, the suite helps in ascertaining the value proposition of every business travel undertaken by an employee.

Its services have been adopted by over 40 medium and large enterprises, including DTDC, Hector Beverages and First Source, among others. The company has been generating revenue for over 18 months now, with positive unit economics, it said in the media statement.

“Corporate travel market in India is huge, but it is not digitised yet and products can solve the inefficiency that exists. It involves many processes such as policy implementation, authentication, booking, reflecting on the accounting system, etc.,” said Nao Murakami, founder and general partner, Incubate Fund India.

According to the company, the corporate travel market in India is estimated to be worth $36 billion.

Rajagopalan, an alumnus of BITS-Pilani and Kansas State University, had stints in Qualcomm and Motorola before starting out on his own. Chacko, a hotel management graduate, had also founded food and beverage outlets Umerkot, Tattva and Cloud Bar. He had earlier worked at Leela Palace, Leela Kempinski and Taj Group of Hotels.