Thai travel tech startup Tourkrub to raise US$5M in Series B funding to support regional expansion plan
Thailand-based travel tech startup Tourkrub, which acts as an online travel agent for tour packages, is raising a US$5 million Series B funding round.
The funding round followed a US$3 million round that the company has raised previously from King Power Click, the digital arm of Thailand’s leading travel retail group King Power Group.
Other participants in the previous round were SMEs Private Equity Trust Fund by the Government Savings Bank (GSB) of Thailand, the third lot which managed by Premier Advisory Group, Tao Kae Noi by Itthipat Preeradechapan, and 500 TukTuks.
According to the company statement, Tourkrub will use the funding to support its regional expansion plan and improve the travel experience. It plans to strategically take advantage of the fact that Bangkok is one of the top choices of transit for outbound travellers.
Founder and CEO Jakapan Leeathiwat commented that outbound tourism has been booming over the past six years with 8.8 per cent annual growth on average thanks to the growing middle class, the emergence of an ageing society and baht appreciation. Group tour alone shared around 25 per cent of Thai outbound travellers with 10.2 per cent growth on average. The figures showed that outbound tourism outpaced the growth of Thai GDP of 3.5 per cent growth YoY.
This raises high optimism for the travel company who aims to build a strong footing through this data.
“It can be seen that travelling abroad has become a norm and culture of Thai people, whether the first jobber, working parent and senior. Tourkrub saw the important role of technology to address complexity in tour business and that’s why we jumped onto this bandwagon,” he continued.
Since its establishment in 2016, the company claimed to have experienced 700 per cent growth.
Leeathiwat further detailed that there were around 40,000 users booking a tour service via Tourkrub last year, up 53 per cent compared to the previous year. The transactional billing valued more than THB1 billion (US$32 million) last year, up 33 per cent compared to the previous year.
Tourkrub expects its customers to reach 100,000 (up 250 per cent) and worth more than THB2.5 billion (US$80 million) this year.