HalalBooking has announced a pre-Series A investment round of $2 million.
The funding was led by Azar Gurbanov, co-founder of wellness specialist FSAstore, as well as other individual investors.
HalalBooking CEO Elnur Seyidli says the round may end up being $2.5 million and the company is currently finalizing the other participants.
Subscribe to our newsletter below
“Initially we were planning to hold a larger $10 million Series A round, but decided that it would be better to do a smaller $2-3 million round this year.
“This will allow us to accelerate our growth plans for 2020, and then perhaps do a large $10-20 million Series A round in 2020 and achieve our $1 billion unicorn goal by 2024.”
He believes that as the market for halal-friendly travel increases, more investors are being attracted to the segment.
In a statement, he adds that the injection will enable the company to accelerate growth through marketing spend in key markets.
The company claims the site has had a 60% growth in net revenue for the first half of 2019 compared to the same period in 2018. It adds that July was a record month with $4.5 million in online bookings.
The company also announced that Sebastian Fallert, former U.K. managing director of Secret Escapes, has joined HalalBooking as a non-executive director.