Smartairtrip.com raises $10m. in an initial round of funding

NEW DELHI - India's global travel company, Smartairtrip.com, an IATA approved B2B and B2C travel company, has just raised $10 million in an initial round of funding for 10% equity in the company, raising its valuation to $100 million.

Apart from utilising these funds to enhance their technology, strike exclusive deals with airlines and hotels, operational expansion and marketing, Smartairtrip would also use the finance to pre-purchase hotel rooms exclusively and seats in various airlines, and would sign up exclusive deals.

The president of the company is a global entrepreneur and the rest of the board of directors are travel professionals with extensive knowledge of the online and offline travel industry.

The company is in the process of filing its prospectus for going public on the Bombay Stock Exchange and will list its ADRs on the NASDAQ stock exchange in the next financial year.

Last year, the company had turnover of INR 36 crore and, this year, the company is expected to touch INR 200 crore, which is a 45% growth.

The online travel portal is aggressively focusing on expanding its domestic agent network. It currently has 12,300 travel agents. Globally, it is focusing on signing off at least 50,000 travel agents, and is offering 1.5% commissions in the domestic market space, which is much higher for travel agents as compared to other air and hotel consolidators in the domestic market.

Smartairtrip will exclusively pre-purchase inventory of 5-star hotel properties globally to enhance profitability and will specially promote those properties in the online and B2B market space through various online meta search engines, television etc.

sourced:traveldailynews.asia