FX Trip, a service provider of independent travel, has received a multi-million dollar investment in the B Series financing round, led by Zhongwei Capital and participated by its A Series investor Shunwei Capital. FX Trip’s founder Zhenhua Wang said the company would expand its destinations coverage and distribution channels, and accelerate the pace of its capital financing after this financing round.
Mr. Wang said FX Trip’s turnover in 2015 was 10 times higher than the year before, and the company has been growing at 30% every month. It is offering products in eight destinations, and some 70% of its business was generated by word-of-mouth. Some of its travel products have already become profitable. FX trip has almost 100 employees, 40% of them are in the technical team and 60% in the tourism products team.
After a year in business, FX Trip has got to the stage that it can guarantee a certain sales volume for its upstream providers, which in turn enables the company to get preferential pricing for packaging travel products.
Unlike other players in the online travel industry, FX Trip doesn’t increase its user volume and retention by improving its content and search engine capabilities. Instead it concentrates on improving its products to boost its volume. At the same time it doesn’t only rely on user retention but also actively fosters word-of-mouth to bring in new users.
Mr. Wang said that FX Trip had to go through product standardization to build its supply chain in its initial phase before it was able to seek out non-standard products such as day-trips. With this logic, FX Trip will be able to achieve relatively high growth after it has built a solid user base and a certain level of referral.（Translation by David）
