India and US-based travel planning service MyGola has been wooing some of the high profile figures on the West Coast investment scene, capturing $1 million in funding today.
The likes of Blumberg Capital and Dave McClure of 500 Startups are part of a group also that also includes Lewis Cheng, Mac Harman, Priyavrat Bhartia, Sandeep Bapna, Aldo Monteforte and Alvaro Gutierrez that have now invested in the company.
The trip planning company, now two years old, says it plans to use the investment round to "expand our global footprint of guides and build out the product".
MyGola, the brainchild of ex-Googler Anshuman Bapna, is different from many of the trip planning sites hitting the web over the past 18 months or so, being a travel planning service that connects human guides with users, who then do all the online research for a trip.
The Mygola twist is that the answers come not from the so-called crowd or a user generated content-based exchange of ideas with other contributors but from paid staff of guides who research the question and provide and answer.
The first few answers are free, after that there are annual and trip-based pricing plans.
Bapna says the company has built a technology platform that "aggregates the entire travel web and auto-categorizes it - deals, events, hotels, sublets, even tips from locals on Foursquare and your friends who've recently been there".
Other investments from Blumberg include Carwoo and Appboy, while McClure can name SlideShare and Bit.ly on the roster at 500 Startups.