Reliance Capital, Norwest Venture Partners and TV18 Group to offer online travel

Mumbai: Yatra Online, billed as the first online and centralised travel services company for the India market, today announced that it has secured initial funding from leading financial and strategic investors that include Anil Ambani''s Reliance Capital, Promod Haque''s venture capital firm, Norwest Venture Partners, and Raghav Bahl''s Television 18 Group.

In 2006, the Indian travel market is estimated to reach approximately $40 billion, and plans to hit close to $50 billion by 2009. Although the domestic travel market is expanding, the needs of Indian travellers are still under-served since the travel industry is extremely fragmented, making it difficult for Indian travellers to find, compare and select the best flight and hotel packages and deals, and make reservations at the lowest cost and finest service.

Yatra says it will help businesses and consumers to book airline, railway and bus tickets and reserve hotel rooms and car rentals through its round the clock call centre or website, or through its mobile services. Yatra will provide travel-related information, pricing, availability and reservations for airlines, hotels, railway, buses and car rentals across India.

The Yatra service will be operational in the first half of 2006.

"We are very excited about our investment in Yatra and the market opportunity the company has targeted. Internet penetration in India is only in its infancy and investing in companies with sound business models that leverage the Internet to reach today''s consumers is a growing trend for our firm," said Promod Haque, managing partner of NVP and board advisor to Yatra.

The founders of Yatra are NRIs Dhruv Shringi and Manish Amin, seasoned travel industry executives who between them claim a combination of 45 years of travel experience and 15 years of online travel experience to Yatra.

They had earlier worked together to help build and manage one of Europe''s largest online travel businesses, Ebookers Plc, which was recently acquired by travel giant Cendant Corporation (market capitalization: $17.98 billion) for $410 million.

"With our nation-wide reach to consumers across India, we will bring more bookings to hotels and airlines," says Dhruv Shringi, co-founder and board member, Yatra. " Even the smallest hotel in the smallest town in India will benefit from more visibility than they have ever experienced before. Yatra is committed to selling and filling seats on flights and hotel rooms that are currently under-utilised."