A certified record states that commercial enterprise tours’ common price globally is $117.6 billion annually. It is one of the largest prices that any organization seems to control. Enter Travelstop is an AI-powered SaaS platform that simplifies business travel and fee management for Asian corporates.
The expense control startup gives smooth-to-use tools that streamline the commercial enterprise journey reserving system while automating fee reporting and imparting meaningful insights. Travelstop offers three center product features: Travel, Expenses, and Insights, flawlessly integrated to provide an unbroken experience.
The Singapore-founded startup was based in 2016 by ex-Yahoo executives Prashant Kirtane, Vijay Aggarwal, and Altaf Dhamani. The trio had in 2014 based Travelmob, which was obtained through travel startup HomeAway, which changed into a flip obtained through Expedia in 2015.
Why startup once more?
TravelMob was a vacation rental marketplace focused on Asia. The co-founders raised a seed round of $1 million from Jungle Ventures and Accel. After exiting the startup, they determined to build Travelstop late last year. In April, the platform raised seed funding of $1.2 million from SeedPlus, with numerous travel industry veterans from Expedia and Yahoo.
On Wednesday, Travelstop raised $three million pre-Series A investment through Accel Partners. The spherical additionally saw participation from Strive (formerly GREE Ventures) and existing investor SeedPlus. As part of this new spherical, Accel’s Prashanth Prakash may become a member of the business enterprise’s Board of Directors. The team plans to use the new budget to spend money on the era and boost the adoption of Travelstop throughout Asia.
“While at Travelmob and in all my previous roles, fee control turned into, in the main, a manual process, and the corporate travel gear we were using had not developed for many years. The enjoyment, from dealing with the commercial enterprise journey to costs, becomes extremely frustrating. Prashant says we used to spend a lot of time doing repetitive and administrative paintings,” Prashant says.
The business fashions of those conventional company travel control companies have not developed for many years. They give enterprise owners no visibility on enterprise travel and fee spending. “So with our ardor for constructing easy and elegant merchandise, blended with our enjoy in Asia, we concept it changed into the right time to automate, modernize, and simplify the whole enjoy – from tour planning to cost reimbursements.
Using technology, we need to help employers keep prices low, permit a degree of flexibility for business travel, and accumulate statistics and prices—all in a single, clean-to-use interface,” Prashant says. Travelstop has been constructed using a next-generation server with a much smaller structure controlled in the cloud for computerized scaling. It uses continuous, supervised system learning to enhance the hint engine within the cloud.
What does it do?
The platform uses machine learning and AI-powered personalization to make flight and motel guidelines, allowing travelers to book within minutes. “We analyze from indicators like frequently booked flights and lodges in an organization, distance from the workplace or event vicinity, reviews, and personal alternatives,” Prashant says.
It also offers capabilities like ‘Book for Others’, which allows journey managers to be more productive, and invoice billing, which permits companies to pay a single bill for their travel bookings. The platform additionally lets employers pre-approve a budget for a business journey; with this, employees have greater autonomy and versatility to e-book trips primarily based on their alternatives (for example, fly low-fee service but stay in a 5-star inn).
“Employers can also set up an incorporated travel policy if they need extra management. Flight or motel reservations that are not in step with the policy are flagged to enhance compliance,” Prashant provides. The platform also offers incorporated equipment to make fee reporting a breeze. Travelstop works with enterprise prices (no longer tour-related). It also permits streamlined approval workflows and automatic facts flow into their accounting software, decreasing errors and boosting productivity.
Travelstop’s information-pushed insights can help lessen fees and expenditures. They allow expenses to be reviewed at the agency, department, crew, or individual level to make better choices for financial cost savings. It is the most effective cost for every energetic person, making it a lower-priced option.
The cost control area
“Broadly, we’re targeted at simplifying business travel and rate management for excessive-boom companies in Asia. The region is the biggest business journey market globally, comprising 40 percent of global commercial enterprise travel. By 2025, business travel spending in Asia will double and make up 1/2 of the global total. More than 80 percent of all commercial enterprise travel in Asia is unmanaged, and we are targeted on handing over the high-quality-in-elegance client revel in for a business tour and expense management for corporates in Asia,” Prashant says.
Currently, at their pre-revenue level, Prashant says they no longer charge transaction or reservation expenses for any of the reservation transactions on-platform. They plan to have an easy, smooth-to-understand, and affordable SaaS rate in line with the lively consumer in line with the month.
Business price management is a fast-developing section of the journey and fintech circuits. Currently, Delhi-based Happy, founded in 2012, is operating in this space. It aims to make price management cashless, paperless, and cellular-pleasant by simplifying the entire cost control workflow, from price recording to accounting. There is also Fyle, an automatic cost management solution for businesses and people. It was released in 2016 and has elevated its footprint to the United States, Netherlands, and Singapore.
But Travelstop believes its platform stands apart. It has partnered with Traveloka, a major travel technology organization in Southeast Asia, to supply the most substantial inventory of flights and resorts to enterprise travelers in Asia. The partnership is expected to roll out in the following months alongside other middle capabilities, such as 24-x7 travel disruption management and hassle-free journey coverage. These additions are predicted to permit Travelstop to target larger businesses in the location.
Regarding funding, Prashanth Prakash, Partner at Accel, says, “Travelstop is constructing a regionally applicable answer for the millennial generation of commercial enterprise visitors. In over a year, they’ve constructed a strong, class-defining business and launched an international-elegance product followed by a developing number of corporations and their employees. We are excited to join Travelstop on their task to form the destiny of commercial enterprise travel.”
