Travelstop, a Singapore-based travel startup founded by a team of former Yahoo! and Expedia employees, announced that it has raised $1.2-million seed funding from a group of investors led by SeedPlus, a Singaporean seed-stage venture fund.
An unnamed travel-focused venture capital firm based in the US also joined the round, along with industry executives such as former ex-Expedia senior business leaders Dan Lynn and Vikram Malhi; Rally Health President and COO David Ko; and Hyper Island Singapore regional operations director Jarrod Howe.
Travelstop, which launches operations in Singapore and the rest of Southeast Asia on Monday, is an AI-powered software-as-a-service platform that seeks to simplify business travels for corporates in Asia, which the company said is 90 per cent unmanaged.
A white paper released by the World Travel and Tourism Council in 2017 highlighted the top 10 countries with the strongest forecast for annual business travel growth over the next 10 years. They include, in Asia, China with 9.5 per cent annual growth, followed by Myanmar (8.7 per cent), Hong Kong (8 per cent), Cambodia (7.4 per cent), and India (7.2 per cent).
“In 2018, we will focus our energies on a few priority markets like Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Taiwan and will look to expand beyond these markets in 2019,” he said.
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