TripVillas has scored $500,000 in funding from Blume Ventures, Neoteny Labs, MENA Venture Investors as well as newer participants such as Samer Mouasher and KH Lim.
Friends and family component have also contributed to the round.
The Singapore-based company will use this new fund to strengthen customer service, and develop a mobile channel during the next quarter.
In March 2012, Tripvillas received its first funding round of $1 million from Neoteny Labs, Blume Ventures, MENA Venture Investments and other angel investors.
The company has completed its support infrastructure (teams assisting customers via email, and other online means) in Bangalore and it claims this as a key differentiating factor when compared to other similar services in the market.
It is also planning to expand its service to the US market by mid-2014.
In May 2013, TripVillas and US-based HomeAway entered into a partnership deal that enabled HomeAway to access TripVillas' Asia Pacific holiday homes, including destinations like Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia.
Also, TripVillas has entered into multiple agreements with the world's largest OTAs and travel demand websites. Details of these partnership will be announced over the next two quarters.
Among the countries that the company operates, TripVillas list India, US and Philippines as the top three countries in terms of number of bookings and traffic to the site.
For the year 2013, the company has generated close to $250 million in qualified leads for its property owners and served about 500,000 travelers.
In March 2013, HomeAway and Singapore-based Travelmob signed a partnership that gave HomeAway access to Travelmob's properties. But, in July 2013, HomeAway acquired Travelmob in an effort to expand into Asia market.
Competitors of TripVillas in Asia include Roomorama, and TheVillaGuide.
Founded in early 2010, TripVillas lists in its website about 50,000 holiday homes across both Asia and Europe.
To understand the company's future plans, Tnooz interviewed founder and CEO of Tripvillas, Roshan D’Silva:
Now, there are so many similar service providers in the market. How is Tripvillas steering the competition and distinguishing itself?
There are two kinds of destination websites - ones focused on the bigger cities and those on the second homes/vacation homes. We clearly fall in the second home category.
As such our audience is the families/groups looking to take a holiday and for whom space and comfort is important.
We believe that not just us but any marketplace should differentiate itself based on the following points:
- Engagement with owners: Are they using the website regularly? Is their property description/configuration updated and accurate? Do they know how to use the website or has someone else listed their property for them?
- Depth and breadth of coverage of holiday homes : We don't believe the needs of the audience (who have come to our website looking for holiday homes) or of vacation home owners is served by allowing resorts, hotels, serviced apartments etc. to list.
- Transactional tools: For instance, we offer a 'Book Now' button (opt-in by owners), an escrow service and automated refunds and cancellations.
Any plan of acquiring someone in the similar space as yours?We are a very small company and so it would not be respectful of the other team to call any transaction an acquisition.
Marketplaces by the nature of the business thrive on liquidity and so we are constantly seeking other teams (to work together) who have demonstrated an understanding of the challenges and have elegant solutions.
How is the partnership with HomeAway doing?
The partnership has now completed close to a year. While it doesn't contribute a significant number to our overall scale, this was expected given the nature of the business and our own strong position in our demand markets.
However, we have learnt a lot from them and we respect what they have done over the years to build this industry.
Plan for next 18 months?
We intend to complete our global footprint and to innovate while we do so to ensure more travelers experience the benefits of holiday homes over traditional hotels.
We also intend to grow Holiday Home Times significantly as in many of our markets.