Online travel agency MakeMyTrip agreed on Wednesday to provide $15m in series B funding for India-based travel community and holiday recommendation platform HolidayIQ as part of a strategic partnership agreement.
Founded in 2004, HolidayIQ’s online plaatform enables travellers to write reviews and share their experiences with others, and has so far gathered more than one million such holiday reviews to date.
MakeMyTrip will take a 28% stake in the company through the investment, HolidayIQ chief executive Hari Nair told The Times of India, adding that HolidayIQ has now raised $27m to date.
In addition to MakeMyTrip’s investment, the two companies will join forces to scale HolidayIQ and further develop the company’s mobile platform. The funding will also be used to develop more content.
Tiger Global Management and Accel Partners supplied $5m for HolidayIQ in 2013, following HolidayIQ’s de-merger from holiday booking site Wego. Wego and HolidayIQ had merged in 2010, and raised an undisclosed amount in funding from Tiger Global at the same time.
Accel Partners reportedly invested an undisclosed sum in 2006, while angel investor Devinder Singh Puri also provided an undisclosed amount of seed funding.
Rajesh Magow, MakeMyTrip’s co-founder and chief executive for India, said: “This tie-up will power our hotel-growth strategy, and also provide immense value to Indian travellers in the form of user generated and curated trip-planning content.
“We also expect to rapidly scale our reviews and recommendation engine as an outcome of this investment.”