This Pune Based Startup Just Got $3 Mn From Mayfield & Kalaari To Make Trip Planning A Breeze

Where do we go? How do we go? When? Travel logistics can become a long, drawn out horror story for many and people often lookout for resources which could help them make their trip planning a easy task. This has led way for many startups to enter in the trip planning space. Triphobo is one such startup which is trying to transform travel experience of the people.

TripHobo, formerly known as JoGuru, founded in 2012 by Praveen Kumar (IIM Lucknow), Karthik Ramachandra (IIM Indore) and Saket Newaskar (MDI, Gurgaon), is a travel planning startup which acts like a resource of user created trip itineraries.

This Pune-based startup has just secured $3 Mn in Series B funding led by Mayfield and existing investor Kalaari Capital.

The Concept

Triphobo is a visual algorithmic trip planner which allows users to choose where they want to travel, suggests attractions, helps plan each trip day in detail and make bookings of the same through the platform. Users also can discover itineraries created by other users and use them for their personal planning.

At the backend, it runs an algorithm (Trip Optimizer) to optimize the trip taking into account travel distances, open/ close timings, preferred mode of transportation, etc.

“Being avid travelers, my co-founders and I felt that there was a massive space for innovation in customization of travel. I believe we’ve been vindicated both by our users, who continue to love the product; and our investors, who’ve reposed their faith in our vision.” says Praveen, CEO, TripHobo.

Traction

Triphobo, till now, has seen over 70,000 users, who have created their itineraries and curated content for close to 400 top tourist cities worldwide.

In addition to the travel planner platform, TripHobo also provides planning related information for over 50,000 points of interest that aid users in travel planning.

“We believe Triphobo represents the very best of Travel 3.0 and we are very excited to partner with the team”, says Nikhil Khattau, Managing Partner, MF Advisors, advisor to Mayfield India II.

TripHobo has a affiliate revenue model; in India it competes with mygola, and Roadtrippers, Plnnr & Tripomatic in international markets. This Series B round of funding comes in within a year after it had raised Series A round funding from Kalaari. The startup had raised about $400k in seed funding from a Pune based private investor in 2012.

The funds raised in this round would be used to primarily invest in R&D, talent acquisition, scaling content and technology integration with the travel ecosystem.