SUMMARY
Korea Investment Partners (KIP), Samsung Venture Investment Corporation (SVIC) have joined as investors
The company will invest towards developing the hotel division
HappyEasyGo claims to have a user base of over 10 Mn
Gurugram-based online travel agency (OTA) platform HappyEasyGo has raised INR 350 Cr ($49.4 Mn) in its Series B+ funding round.
The company reportedly raised funds from investors such as Korea Investment Partners (KIP), Samsung Venture Investment Corporation (SVIC), UOB Venture, 10 Fund, CVCapital, Zero2IPO Ventures and M&S Partners.
It plans to use the funds to primarily strengthen its air ticket business and build a hotel division in India. Prior to this round, the company raised an undisclosed amount of funding in a Series A+ round in September 2018.
Founded in 2017 by Boris Zha, HappyEasyGo is an air ticket booking platform in India and has recently enabled hotel booking as well. The company claims to have a user base of over 10 Mn. The company is looking to grow its hotels business through localisation and maintaining the lowest price for growth in the market.
Boris Zha, founder and CEO, HappyEasyGo expects that by the end of December, the hotel business would be doing over 3000 bookings a day. The company has also partnered with trusted brands like Samsung, VIVO, Transsion, Airtel Payments Bank, Oman Air, OLAMoney and MobiKwik to reach out to a wide number of user base while also reducing the overall customer acquisition cost.
In addition to this, it recently launched multi-level loyalty program rewarding travelers with various benefits like exclusive OLA coupons, Lounge service, priority customer support, healthcare benefits and many other benefits.
The country’s overall travel market is estimated to become a $48 Bn industry within the next three years, according to a June 2017 Google India-BCG report. Some of the leading players in the market include MakeMyTrip, Yatra, ixigo, Cleartrip, etc.
Outbound tourism spending in India is expected to surpass $42 Bn by the end of the year 2024.
A 2018 Praxis Global report says that the online travel market in India, led by flight and hotel aggregators, is expected to touch $13.6 Bn by 2021 and will account for almost 43% of the total travel category in the country.
The report said most of the growth in the Indian travel market would come from the increasing penetration of international flight and hotel bookings offered by online portals such as Cleartrip, MakeMyTrip, Yatra, and others.
