05 Jun 2017

Goomo raises $50 million to challenge online travel giants of India

India-based online travel agency Goomo is just a few months old but has managed to raise a massive $50 million in private equity funding.

A Mauritius-based group known as Emerging India is backing the company in a series of tranches, with $25 million already put into the company.

Goomo launched in March this year but came from an existing offline business, Goomo Holdings, which began operations in 2006 in Mumbai.

The ramping up of activity follows Emerging India’s acquisition of Orbit Corporate and Leisure Tours in November last year as part of a $180 million investment in online travel.

The strategy is to build a brand in the India market to rival that of MakeMyTrip and Cleartrip over the next two to three years.

The company intends to target both leisure and business travel but currently has just products covering flights, packages and trade fairs.

Hotel, bus and rail content is to be added shortly.

CEO Varun Gupta says:

“Goomo is being built ground up to be an omnichannel platform that will facilitate corporate and consumer travel bookings across online and offline channels.”

Goomo says it has more than 300 employees based in 15 cities mostly in India, with an office also in Germany.