The Innovation Design and Entrepreneurship Academy (iDEA) program, run by the Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC) of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Division, has awarded Tk10 lakh to Travela, a travel-tech firm from Bangladesh.
The firm raised Tk 50 lakh in angel funding in May of this year. They are now in discussions with regional and international investors to secure further funding for their Pre-seed round.
“At the beginning, we were just a local alternative for Airbnb. It was intentional. We took our time to understand our users, the local market, and the actual need. We listened to our users, and homeowners and gradually introduced features and facilities, small iterations that, in a year, built a product that is better suited to serve the local market than any global giant”, said Saad Rahman, Co-founder & CEO of Travela.
Mir Ishtiaque Ahmed, Co-founder, and COO of Travela said, “We’re leading the market in the rental apartment segment, and seeing steady growth. We’ve also experimented with hotels and have seen an optimistic response, and now getting serious about hotels as well. We’ll launch two more verticals in the first and second quarters of the next year respectively.”
Travela has been around for a year, and so far it seems promising. They got their start as a platform for sharing lodging. In its first year of business, Travela has completed about 3500 bookings. More than 600 properties are advertised on the website, which spans six cities.
