Byond Travel to raise up to $3 million this year

Plans to scale up to 300 destinations across 100 countries in six to nine months from now

Byond Travel, a Bengaluru-based, experience-focused travel platform, is looking at raising anywhere between $1 million and $3 million in a Series-A round of funding to build team, expand into multiple geographies and for customer acquisitions, according to its founder Vikram Ahuja.

The four-month-old company, the first startup out of Kyron’s Innovation Labs, had raised an initial seed round of $100,000 from Kyron Angel Network. Ahuja is a founding partner at Kyron, a global startup accelerator and capital (VC) funding firm based out of Bengaluru.

“A couple of private equity players, and some international firms that are involved in the travel domain having networks in South Asia, are evincing interest in investing in us. We should be completing the fund-raising exercise within this calendar year,” he said.

 

Byond Travel, which went live two months ago, currently features over 100 destinations and experiences across 40 countries. It is planning to have 300 destinations across 100 countries in six to nine months from now. Byond’s packages range from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1.5 lakh per traveller depending on the destination and the experience.

The business model of Byond is different from other travel websites as it is an expert in on-ground travel operations and logistics, which means that unlike other websites, Byond has the capability to fulfil its own trips, Ahuja said. “For example, we encourage fishing with local fisherman in Kerala, and participating in husky rides in Finland,” he added.

According to Ahuja, the experimental travel segment globally is currently pegged at 150 million travellers (or $200 billion in value terms), and is projected to increase to 300 million travellers ($450 billion) over the next five years.

“At present, Byond’s mobile website is bringing in 70 per cent of the traffic. We are developing mobile apps for the Android and iOS platforms, to  be launched later this year,” he said.