Click Travel, a corporate travel specialist, has received unspecified funding from BGF.
The United Kingdom-based Click describes it as a multimillion-pound investment and says prior investments for BGF had varied between £3 million and £12 million.
This is the first time the company has received external funding, but it says the investment opportunities for tech-led businesses like it were “literally endless.”
Click's CEO Jill Palmer adds:
“We’ve received approaches from more than 25 private equity investors this year in the U.K. and U.S. They are attracted by our technology-led strategy, great people and great growth story. We chose the BGF because of their partnership approach with management teams and their long-term approach to investments.”
Click says it has achieved £40 million in new business in the past financial year, and turnover growth of more than 30% year-on-year for four consecutive years. Gross sales in 2017 were £205 million.
The company has set out a three-point strategy, which includes developing its booking platform as well as a SaaS-style system for the unmanaged business travel market, and will use the BGF investment to execute on that. Palmer says:
“We want to change the mindset behind how businesses book and manage business travel. We’ve seen how other Future Fifty members have disrupted the traditional ways of doing business in their sectors, and with our approach to technology, we believe we can drive a similar revolution in the business travel sector.”
Part of this is a dedicated innovation team led by founder and chief technology officer Simon McLean. The idea is for the team to look at mid- to long-term trends as well as developments outside the industry. The innovation team is part of its product and engineering department which was also recently boosted by the appointment of Sarah Hale as head of engineering. Hale joined from Skyscanner, where she led its internationalization project.
Click is a member of Government-backed Future Fifty, giving it access to other fast-growing digital companies, including AO and Skyscanner, which it can learn from.
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The investment in the business is likely to boost interest in Click as either a potential target or a company that be could be acquisitive itself. However, Palmer describes BGF as having a “patient capital” approach and one which invests for the longer term.
“Therefore being acquired is not on our radar. If there was an interesting target for acquisition we would not rule it out, either in this sector or an aligned sector. However we have’t found anything and are not actively looking.”