Stayzilla raises $20 million funding to reach 50,000 accommodations by end of year

Stayzilla.com is a Chennai based online accommodation bookings marketplac. A fast growing player in India’s travel ecosystem, it today announced a $20 M Series B round led by Nexus Venture Partners, with participation from existing investor Matrix Partners India (initial reports suggested $15 million). The funds will be used to expand to new cities, develop a stronger brand platform and work with accommodation owners to accelerate the growth of the emerging structured and alternate accommodations market in India, which includes hotels, homestays, guest houses, resorts, B&B’s, jungle lodges, boat houses, paying guests, etc.Stayzilla.com was founded by Yogendra Vasupal back in 2006 and has grown over the years to reach a tipping point in the last couple of years.

Stayzilla has developed a platform to address this market by offering a selection of over 20,000 accommodations across more than 4000 towns. Commenting on the funding, Yogendra Vasupal, Founder & CEO, Stayzilla.com said, “Stayzilla is the market leader for accommodation bookings in India today. We have achieved tremendous growth over the last year and this investment will help us expand exponentially and tap newer destinations to reach 8000 towns and 50,000 accommodations by the end of the year. For accommodation owners and customers, our end-to-end managed marketplace model has been our biggest strength and we will continue to build on this to complement the massive tourism potential across India".

Over the next few quarters, the company will focus on inflecting the nascent alternate accommodations market in India (which is several times larger than the hotel reservations industry). “Stayzilla’s explosive growth, particularly on mobile, reinforces the power of discovery driven marketplaces in a market like India. Matrix Partners India is privileged to be an early partner to Yogi Vasupal and the Stayzilla team in this journey.” said Avnish Bajaj, co-founder and Managing Director, Matrix India.

The travel space is again seeing activity now across the funnel. Trip planning has seen investor interest with TravelTriangle picking up a round recently and most recently, iTraveller is another Bangalore based travel marketplace picking up steam. ixigo has been aggressive on mobile and is widening its scope apart from the big OTAs like Makemytrip. StayZilla finds itself in aggregating accommodations across India and there are others like Zostel and Oyo Rooms doing that but these two have ownership of the properties.

Website: Stayzilla