Nigerian Travel Booking Site Travelbeta.com Raises $2 Million
Travelbeta, the Lagos-based travel-booking startup just closed a $2 million seed fund. The funding will go into negotiating partnerships with travel agencies and other partners across the world that will help it provide more travel options to Nigerians, says the startup’s co-founder and former Konga exec, Onyekah Akumah.
The seed round came from Altheus, a local investment firm and other local investors that chose to remain unnamed in the announcements.
Onyeka Akumah, Wole Ayorinde, and David Asuku, the co-founders started the company in July out of a physical location and took the company online at the end of October. Before Travelbeta, Onyeka Akumah worked at Konga, and also Wakanow, an online travelling booking agency which offers similar service as Travelbeta.
The funding is coming in early. For most Nigerian startups, the typical script is to bootstrap for up to a year with multiple investor pitches and sustained traction, before winning over investors.
Onyeka told TechCabal that the quality of the team was a big draw the for the investors.
“We’ve been able to assemble great talent in the Travel industry across different departments of the organization. The investors were first convinced about the ability and most importantly the experience of the team to deliver on its mandate,” he said.
He also cited the opportunity with the market size. According to him, “the number of travelers in Nigeria grew by over 15% in the last 12 months.” This, coupled with little the number of people that currently get tickets via online portals – Onyekah puts it at around 5% – sealed investors’ confidence in the business. Source: AFK Insider