Canada-based hotel booking platform SnapTravel completed a $21.2m series A round yesterday after raising $13.2m from investors including Telstra Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of telecommunications company Telstra.
The company identified Telstra Ventures and basketball professional Stephen Curry as the new investors in the extension. It had raised $8m in a July 2017 first tranche led by venture capital firm iNovia and backed by Lightbank, Bee Partners, Hedgewood and angel investor Peter Kern.
Founded in 2016, SnapTravel has developed a software platform equipped with natural language processing and artificial intelligence to provide curated hotel packages to users who can then book them through a text message or a variety of messaging platforms.
SnapTravel had previously received $1.1m in seed financing from Lightwood, Bee Partners, Hedgwood and a number of private investors in July 2016.
Telstra Ventures principal Yash Patel said: “SnapTravel sits at the intersection of two trends we believe in: the growth of messaging-based commerce and the continued disruption of the enormous travel market.
“This is an area where many incumbents have yet to successfully leverage the growing shift in consumer purchase behaviour from offline, web and mobile apps to messaging and voice.”