Ex-MakeMyTrip Employees’ Startup Which Develops Direct Booking Systems For Hotels Gets $1 Mn From Jungle Ventures

Noida and Singapore-based startup Commeasure, which runs a B2B platform helping hotels develop their direct booking systems has raised a seed round of $1 Mn backed led by venture capital firm Jungle Ventures.

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.

Founded in 2014 by Amit Saberwal and Asheesh Saxena, with seed capital of $370,000, the technology platform also includes a booking engine, training and online distribution system. Currently, the company caters to small and medium-sized hotel chains and claims to have about 500 customers across India and South East Asia.

By 2015, online hotel gross bookings in APAC is estimated at $34.5 Bn, a 51% increase over 2012. Bookings generated via hotel websites would be about $12.3 Bn.

“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 funds raised will go in expansion and technology development.

Both the founders are ex-MakeMyTrip, while Saberwal was the Nasdaq-listed venture’s chief business officer, Saxena was director, Technology Development.

Sabre, Travelclick (acquired by Thoma Bravo), Buuteeq (acquired by Priceline) are some of the names in the hotel technology space with which Commeasure competes to an certain extend.

Jungle Ventures which is an investor in a couple of Indian startups, has already made an exit from Bengaluru-based missed call marketing firm ZipDial earlier this year, after being acquired by social media giant twitter for about $30 Mn.

The Singapore-based venture capital firm also counts companies, such as online grocery retailer EkStopShop and online micro lending platform Milaap among its India portfolio.

“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.