TravelBank, the travel and entertainment expense management solution, has raised $25 million in its Series B.
According to the announcement, the round was "led by DCM Ventures with participation from Propel Venture Partners, DHVC (Danhua Capital), NEA, Accel, and Silicon Valley Bank. DCM, led by co-founder and general partner David Chao, will receive one seat on the TravelBank board."
This second round of financing comes only ten months after the company announced its $10 million Series A. Clearly, there's still room for a new entrant to grow in the travel and expense management space. With this vote of confidence, investors have given the company fuel to move.
The company recently announced its AutoRewards feature, which allows travelers to book flights with a unique interface: rewards points value. This provides a different incentive for companies to encourage more financially responsible travel, as rewards points actually increase as the price decreases.
This mechanic upends the traditional "more gets more" model of rewards points. And as the majority of airlines evolve into a spend-based earnings model, many companies might want help encouraging their travelers to book responsibly.
Also from the announcement:
"Companies spent close to $1.3 trillion globally on business travel in 2016 according to the Global Business Travel Association," said David Chao of DCM Ventures, which previously backed highly successful global travel companies eDreams in Europe and Tuniu in China. "There is a huge opportunity in this industry and TravelBank is taking the lead, not only modernizing the booking and expense process but also offering companies away to save money on their travel and entertainment spend overall."
"As we grow, TravelBank continues to innovate for the modern traveler," said Duke Chung, CEO and co-founder of TravelBank. ³With this new round of
funding we will continue to expand our company and our product offering, helping even more businesses save money on travel costs and rewarding their employees for encouraging a corporate culture of financial responsibility."
TravelBank launched in 2016 as a mobile-first expense reporting service and now has 30 employees.