KKDay, a Taiwan-based travel experience portal backed by e-commerce firm Alibaba, travel agency group HIS and messaging platform Line, has completed a $75m series C round co-led by public-private partnership Cool Japan Fund, TechCrunch reported yesterday.
State-owned National Development Fund of Taiwan Government co-led the round, with the participation of Monk’s Hill Ventures and MindWorks Capital.
KKDay runs an online travel booking platform catered to vacationers seeking atypical and culturally-authentic experiences in more than 80 countries, with more than 5 million registered users primarily in Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
The company claims to have compensated partially for covid-19 driven travel restrictions with higher demand for more “staycations” in the native countries of its customers.
It will put the funding into rolling-out a new backend system for third-party travel agencies, having begun a pilot of the product in March 2020.
KKDay has now raised a total of $92.5m since it was founded in 2014.
Line Ventures and Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund co-led a series B-plus round of undisclosed size for KKDay in late 2018 on behalf of Line and Alibaba, investing together with Monk’s Hill Ventures and CDIB Capital.
HIS led a $10.5m series B round for KKDay that included venture capital firm MindWorks Ventures in early 2018, after Monk’s Hill Ventures and AppWorks had co-led a $7m series A-plus in 2016 that featured MindWorks, Cathay Venture and Substance Capital.