Traveltech startup Pickyourtrail bags $3 Mn Series A round

Bootstrapped traveltech startup Pickyourtrail has raised $3 million in its Series A round led by Zoho Corp co-founder Kumar Vembu and financial services company iThought's founder Shyam Sekhar.

The funding round was also participated by Freshworks founder Girish Mathrubootham and Rajagopal Subramanian, CIO of investment advisory Entrust.

The five-year-old startup will deploy the latest proceeds towards product innovation, scaling up the proprietary technology platform, expansion of its technical team and creating brand awareness.

Following the round, Pickyourtrail will increase its headcount from 85 employees to 180-200 by the year-end.

A brainchild of Hari Ganapathy and Srinath Shankar, the platform allows travelers to plan, view real-time prices and instantly book vacations to over 200 cities across the globe - completely online.

Pickyourtrail works on a USP of solving core problems of itineraries through personalised algorithm. The algorithm factors aspects such as duration, travel timing, ratings, and feedback given by previous travellers.

According to the founders, the platform has helped over 10,000 travellers build and book personalised itineraries from over 200 cities across the world including Australia, Dubai, New Zealand, France, Italy, Austria, and Switzerland.

It mainly targets honeymooners, budget travellers, family trippers, and has forged partnerships with industry veterans like Amadeus and Expedia to ensure that the customer has the best of offerings to choose from.

For the uninitiated, Pickyourtrail was incubated at Amadeus Next and was selected amongst the top 6 finalists of the prestigious APAC Travel Innovation Summit award.

In travel planning segment, Pickyourtrail says it has no direct competitors, however, MakeMyTrip,  Cox and Kings and Thomas Cook operate in the same space.

The development was reported by BusinessLine.