Travelstop is a traveltech firm focusing on business travel. The platform allows users to manage their business travel affairs on all ends and is a focused corporate tool for taking care of all aspects of their work-related journeys.
Travelstop -About The Company
Travelstop was founded in August 2018 by Altaf Dhamani, Prashant Kirtane and Vijay Aggarwal. The company is headquartered in Central Region, Singapore. The founder trio, who worked together at Yahoo Southeast Asia, had also founded the vacation rentals platform Travelmob, which was acquired by travel startup HomeAway, which was in turn acquired by Expedia in 2015.
Committed to simplifying business travel, it allows users to manage business trips, report expenses to their employer, and provide insights to users that make their travel easier.
The Platform
Travelstop is a corporate travel managing platform for users to book their travel arrangements including airlines and accommodation, handle expense reporting, provide professional assistance, and also obtain insights of the same. With this unified experience, it saves users from the hassle of having to update and track multiple sites and service providers for the actual travel as well as reporting back to their bosses, while also helping them make the experience easier.
The Focus
The main focus of Travelstop is to allow its users to arrange travels easier for their work. They can use this platform as a modern travel agency and a corporate tool at the same time. The platform not only provides business class travel experience, but it also ties back to the original employer for expense reporting, and act as an intelligent platform that analyses your travel data to provide insights, as an AI-powered SaaS(Software as a Service) provider. They are also powered using Cloud-based serverless architecture, helping them scale automatically and virtually without having to boost actual physical infrastructure on their own.
Traditional corporate travel management firms do not usually offer business owners any insights into their business travel and expense spending, hence making budgeting and expense tracking very cumbersome. The end goal is to simplify business travel and create a better experience for their clients.
Support And Investments
Travelstop follows the founders’ attempt at their earlier traveltech startup Travelmob, which they sold to HomeAway. Due to their vast experience as businessmen and traveltech entrepreneurs, Travelstop has received much support and has been successful in raising capital for all their funding rounds.
Travelstop has raised a total of $4.2 million in funding over 2 rounds. Their first round was a seed round in August 2018, raising a total of $1.2 million from five investors, led by SeedPlus. Their latest funding round was a pre-Series A seed round in July 2019, which raised a total of $3 million, led by Accel.
The COVID-19 Effect
Business Travel during the pandemic was a daunting task. While the world worked from home, the travel sector slowed down to a halt. This decreased the volume of business trips, while those that travelled chose the best, safest ways possible.
Travelstop has stayed on top by differentiating itself from the rest of the pack. Companies prefer firms that offer safe, optimized travel solutions, and Travelstop fits this bill. As restrictions are loosened in 2021, they expect a shift in the corporate travel landscape that will favour their company.
By capitalizing on the corporate travel market, they aim at success by offering both travellers and their employers a much better, modern and more streamlined option. While corporate travel in the past came with significant manual labour in terms of paperwork and expense reporting, their platform provides a one-stop solution.
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