MYGOLA, which pivoted from wanting to be an “uber travel agent” to a one-stop shop for users to plan their travel itineraries, has closed Series A funding of US$1.5 million.
The round was led by Helion Venture Partners, one of India's largest funds, and investors in MakeMyTrip and Redbus, and existing investor Blumberg Capital also participated.
Ashish Gupta, MD of Helion, will be joining the MYGOLA board. This brings the total capital raised by MYGOLA to US$2.6 million so far.
The new funds will allow the company to further its ambitions to solve online travel planning globally.
"For the last 10 months we've poured every ounce of our passion, creativity, and dedication into understanding what makes travel planning both fun and a nightmare at the same time," said Prateek Sharma, COO & Co-founder of MYGOLA.
"One of the most common complaints from travellers was the inability to find a good itinerary, a starting point from where they could start tweaking their trip."
MYGOLA's travel planning platform is designed with the independent traveller in mind; they can choose from thousands of itineraries, customise them, and book them instantly. The team has built an interface that packs many innovations, including a visual experience that transports people to their destinations even before they get there, and algorithms that identify the most optimal way to experience a destination.
BBC calls MYGOLA a "visual planning tool with a slick interface ... a one-stop shop for travel itineraries".
The founders claim that Mygola.com has “the potential to disrupt the online travel industry, which hasn’t really seen a revolutionary product since Kayak”.
Co-founder & CEO Anshuman Bapna (pictured left) said, “Travel suffers from a blind-men-and-the-elephant problem. Jetblue knows when you're landing, AirBnB knows where you're staying and Viator knows which tour you're taking.
“If we succeed in combining these elements into an itinerary that the travellers will take with them on their trip, we could become the gateway through which all online travel will get delivered. This could be the way to crack open the last bastion in online travel.”
In his blog Bapna shares three reasons why he believes MYGOLA is different – it allows users to do in 15 minutes what typically takes six weeks; the team has solved some “ridiculously hairy tech” problems; and it took an unusual approach to an unusual problem.
“We take pride in our unique ability to combine deep tech with massive-scale curation to solve the hardest problems of travel planning. Every day we have hundreds of freelancers from around the world use our mechanical Turk-style platform to curate images, videos and a host of other metadata for every travel item in the universe.
“We wanted the experience to transport you to your destination even as you planned your trip. This required us to build large crawling, indexing and ranking infrastructure that would fetch evocative images, relevant videos, stunning panoramic views and authentic tips from travellers.”
Ashish Gupta of Helion said, “Not only am I personally excited about the product that MYGOLA is building, but also believe that their unique approach to combine technology with human curation puts them in a position of great strength.”
WIT tried out the site in July – our experience is recorded here.