Stayzilla, a hotel booking site, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Matrix Partners, in return of a minority stake in the company. The funds raised will be used to strengthen the team, increase its hotel network to over 15,000 and invest in customer service operations.
In 2012, the company had raised $500,000 from Ravi Krishnappa, one of the founding partners of the angel fund VertExperts, who led the investment as part of the Indian Angel Network (IAN).
Founded in 2005, Stayzilla, operated by Inasra Technologies Private Limited, is a hotel booking portal which allows users to search and book hotels across Indian cities with a specific focus on tier 2 and tier 3 cities in the country. The site also offers options to filter results based on budget, amenities, ratings, cuisine and other variables.
It claims to offer hotel reservations in more than 750 cities across India. It also offers last minute deals, Sterling deals, business class deals, weekend deals, Honeymoon deals, among others. At the time of writing this article, the website stated that it lists over 6352 hotels in India. In November 2011, the company had reported (paywall) an operational profit of Rs 1.68 crore in sales.
Competitors
In July 2011, Yatra Online, an online travel agents, had acquired b2b hotel aggregation and reservation company, MagicRooms, through its hotels subsidiary Intech Hotel Solutions.
Online vacation rental marketplace HomeAway is buying a majority stake in travelmob, a Singapore based start-up for vacation rental properties, and with it, a presence in India.
Online short stay accommodation (bread and breakfast) site, Oravel.com, raised seed funding from angel investors. Shravan Shroff, founder of Fame Cinemas, and Ravi Kiran, former CEO – South East & South Asia – Starcom MediaVest Group and angels Anand Ladsariya, managing director of Everest Flavours, Amit Patni, co-founder and chairman of Nirvana Venture Advisors and Bharat Banka, CEO of Aditya Birla Private Equity invested in the firm.
