TripHobo raises a $3 million funding round from Mayfield and Kalaari Capital

TripHobo is a Pune based company that is a resource of user generated travel itineraries. The startup has announced a $3 million funding round led by incoming investor Mayfield and existing investor Kalaari Capital. This is the second round of funding for TripHobo in the 12 months after a Series-A round in July 2014. The funds would be used to primarily invest in R&D, talent acquisition, scaling content and technology integration with the travel ecosystem.

Triphobo is a visual algorithmic trip planner which allows users to choose where they want to travel, suggests attractions, helps plan each trip day in detail and make bookings of the same through the platform. At the backend, it runs an algorithm to optimize the trip taking into account travel distances, open/ close timings, preferred mode of transportation, etc.

TripHobo was founded by Praveen Kumar (IIM Lucknow), Karthik Ramachandra (IIM Indore) and Saket Newaskar (MDI Gurgaon) in 2012 (complete story). Initially called Joguru, the startup rebranded to Triphobo to have a more global approach.“The ambition for Triphobo is to be the central point of the trip planning process by allowing users to plan, optimize and eventually book customized trips by leveraging technology. The founders of TripHobo have demonstrated a keen understanding of the industry and built a scalable platform that has seen great traction over the past year," says Nikhil Khattau Managing Partner, MF Advisors and advisor to Mayfield India II.

“We’re excited to be now associated two of the leading VC firms in India. Three years ago, we set out to create a global product out of India. Being avid travelers, my co-founders and I felt that there was a massive space for innovation in customization of travel,” says Praveen. Currently TripHobo is home to over 70,000 user created itineraries and curated content for close to 400 top tourist cities worldwide. In addition to the travel planner platform, TripHobo also provides planning related information for over 50,000 points of interest that aid users in travel planning.

Online travel planning space has a lot of competition with multiple players vying for the pie. Dormant for a while, the space is now seeing investor interest with Travel Triangle raising $2 million, iTraveller raising $1 million and ixigo upping on the tempo. In a previous interview, Triphobo stressed on the importance of focus on mobile and their Android application is in the pipeline while the iOS app is already out. The company plans to hit two million monthly users by the end of 2015.

Website: Triphobo