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TravelPerk, a business travel management platform, raises $105M

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TravelPerk, a business travel management platform targeted at SMEs, has raised $105 million in a fresh equity-based round of financing led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2.

Existing investors such as Kinnevik Capital, Felix Capital and others also participated.

TravelPerk is now valued at $1.4 billion. This is just a fraction Over the $1.3 Billion Valuation the company revealed two years ago when it kicked of its Series D round — and that marginal increase seems to be a post-money valuation, meaning the valuation has remained flat. Avi Meir is the co-founder of TravelPerk and its CEO. He believes that in a world with a lot of uncertainty, it’s important to have diversified. Both fundingThe following are some examples of how to get started: The value of the stock market has plummeted, a flat valuation isn’t all that bad.

“In today’s climate, where startup funding is down by half and valuations are down across the board, this is a healthy and sober valuation,” Meir told TechCrunch.

Travel is suffering from the pandemic-driven travel crisis Just about a dot on the rearview mirror, this has positioned companies such as TravelPerk a little more favorably than they perhaps were four years ago — travel tech startups Raised at least $3.7 Billion last yearTumodo, a B2B travel application, seems to be a trend that will continue into 2024. Announcing a 35 million dollar raiseLast week.

Well-traveled

TravelPerk is a Barcelona-based platform that offers companies a single platform to book, report, and manage all their domestic or international travel. Customers Can also extend the platformIntegrating with expense management software like SpendeskHuman Resource Software HiBob.

TravelPerk in action Image Credits: TravelPerk

TravelPerk had raisedThe latest cash injection is the fourth installment of a Series D round, which began in 2021. With a $160,000,000 investmentThe company added debt and equity. The company added A further $115 million will be added to the pot the following year in what it’s now calling a Series D-1 round, followed by a smaller $18.5 million extensio from existing investor Kinnevik six months ago in what might have been construed by outsiders as emergency capital — but that wasn’t the case, according to Meir.

“It was far from an emergency infusion — even without this round, we were already funded to break even,” Meir said, adding that last summer’s tranche was actually part of this latest investment.

“Tactically, we led with an anchor commitment from an existing investor and used that momentum to speak with some new investors that we had built relationships with over time,” Meir continued.

So all in, TravelPerk’s D-branded funding round weighs in at nearly $400 million, and the reason it has elected to call this an extension to the ongoing Series D round was due to the fact that it was raised on the same terms as that raised back in 2022.

TravelPerk also hadn’t previously revealed how much of its Series D round was equity vs. debt, but Meir has now confirmed to TechCrunch that it was roughly $80 million in debt.

Follow-on funding

There’s no escaping the fact that TravelPerk has somewhat bucked the broader trend that has seen many startups struggle to raise follow-on capital. But equally, it appears as though it has been burning through a lot of cash, though Meir is adamant that isn’t in fact the case, although it has been investing in its core product.

“It’s far from being spent — we have a significant cash position to provide flexibility for additional investment opportunities, and we were already fully funded to break even prior to this round,” Meir said. “The single largest investment is in our product and technology. Travel is a very complex category — aggregating a huge number of inventory providers, payment methods, and premium customer care functionality. It takes considerable product and engineering resources to do this well.”

This all brings us back to TravelPerk’s latest flagship investor — the mighty SoftBank, What is the best way to get in touch with you?Turning the world of venture capitalism On its HeadThese past seven years. The Japanese investment conglomerate The second Vision Fund has been announcedMicrosoft, Apple, Foxconn, and other limited partners will be back in 2019. As The fund was previously known as the FundSoftBank Investments in almost every technology vertical, but with the economic downturn and startup valuation “corrections” very much the order of the day, SoftBank Significant lossesFrom its Vision Fund, it led it Reduce its investments — for comparison, it made nearly 100 (known) investments in 2022, as per Crunchbase dataCompared to last year, there were less than 15 people.

There were some signs that it was. Get your investment mojo Back in the second half of 2023, and this latest cash injection into TravelPerk could be a sign that it’s about to ramp things up. In an exclusive interview with TechCrunch, SoftBank investor Stephen Thorne — who now gains a seat on TravelPerk’s board of directors — said that there were a multitude of reasons they decided to lead on this round. These include all the usual reasons around things like addressable market size, as well as the company’s growth — it claims a revenue spike of 70% in 2023, with a gross profit north of 90%.

But more than all that, Thorne said they looked at the company’s response to the global pandemic, in that they avoided major layoffs and continued to roll out new products — which is indicative of the broader company culture and how it’s built around Meir.

“Their execution through the Covid period was very impressive, and it was obviously a challenging time for travel startups,” Thorne said. “Their ability to come out of that stronger I think is a great validation of what he [Meir]Has been able build around himself. They’ve had a really measured and deliberate approach towards sustainable growth.”

What’s next for TravelPerk is anyone’s guess, but Meir already has a previous exit to his name in the form of Hotel Ninjas, which he Priceline, the parent company of Booking.com, acquired Booking.com in 2014.. And it’s also worth noting that TravelPerk will hire its first Chief Financial Officer in 2022, someone who has previously led two other technology companies through an IPO.

“[An]The IPO was never an objective The word itself is a good enough reason to buy a product. for TravelPerk,” Meir said. “Our aim is to build a company that will be here in 100 years. Whether we’re private or public, matters less. If and when we’ll make a decision to go public, we’re confident that we’ll be ready.”

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