New Delhi, April 16, 2014: Yatra Online Travel Pvt. Ltd. (‘Yatra’), one of India’s largest online travel companies, today announced a Rs 140 crores funding round led by new investors IDG Ventures and Vertex Venture Management Pte. Ltd. Yatra’s existing investors, including seed investor Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), also participated in this round.

The fresh capital will be used to accelerate the company’s growth plans by enabling Yatra to further strengthen its leadership position in the domestic hotels and holidays business, strategically invest in mobile technology, and strengthen its position as a market leading brand in the online travel industry.

“Over the years Yatra.com has witnessed consistent growth and has created a strong brand for itself in the industry. We are focused on expanding our reach in the market and further diversifying our business by growing the hotels and holiday packages business. This new investment will enable us to enhance our mobile technology, and also strengthen our execution capabilities,” said Dhruv Shringi, co-founder and CEO of Yatra.com. Sudhir Sethi, Founder, Chairman and Managing Director of IDG Ventures India Advisors, said, “The investment in Yatra represents IDG Fund II’s strategy of selective growth investments in market leading technology companies. Driven by Dhruv’s exceptional leadership, the Company has achieved market leadership in the domestic hotels and packages segment. This is a highly experienced and cohesive team that has demonstrated an outstanding track record and shown continued growth in the expanding online travel market in India. We are delighted to lead this round in Yatra and partner with the existing investors.”

Promod Haque, Senior Managing Partner, Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) said, “NVP has continued to increase its investment in Yatra.com since 2006 when the company was founded. We are pleased to have witnessed the business go from a position of strength to a dominant player in the Indian market. The strength of Yatra.com’s management team combined with the company’s unparalleled focus on creating compelling value propositions for Indian travelers is the reason why we continue to back Yatra and believe so strongly in this growing sector.”

Joo Hock Chua, Managing Director & Chief Investment Officer of Vertex Venture Management, said, “Vertex’s investment thesis is to invest in great companies and build them into champions. Yatra is such a company with a trusted name and a dominant position in the domestic travel industry, helmed by a strong management team under the leadership of Dhruv. We are happy to join this strong investor group and be part of the winning team that will contribute to the ongoing success of Yatra .”

About Yatra.com
Launched in August 2006, Yatra is today ranked as the leading provider of consumer-direct travel services in India. Yatra.com has emerged as the most trusted travel brand in India and we were recently voted ‘Most Trusted Brand of India’ in the online travel category by Brand Equity, and also received the coveted most preferred online travel company award twice at the CNBC/Awaaz Consumer Travel Awards.

Based in Gurgaon, India, Yatra is a one-stop-shop for all travel-related services including, Airline reservation, hotel bookings, holiday packages, rail and bus tickets. A leading consolidator of travel products, Yatra.com provides reservation facility for more than 15,000 hotels across 450 cities in India and over 200,000 hotels around the world.

Customers can access Yatra.com multiple ways: through Yatra.com’s user-friendly website, 24×7 multi-lingual call centre, a countrywide network of Holiday Lounges and through their mobile phones.

Yatra’s existing investors are: Norwest Venture Partners (NVP); Reliance Capital, Network 18, Intel Capital, and Valiant Capital Partners.

About Norwest Venture Partners
Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) is a multi-stage venture capital and growth equity investment firm that has partnered with entrepreneurs to build great businesses for more than 50 years. The firm manages over $3.7 billion in capital and has funded more than 500 companies since inception. Headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., NVP has subsidiaries in Mumbai and Bengaluru, India and Herzelia, Israel. NVP makes early to late-stage venture and growth equity investments across a wide range of sectors including: technology, information services, business services, financial services, consumer products/services and healthcare. For more information, please visit www.nvp.com Follow NVP on Twitter @NorwestVP

About IDG Ventures India (www.idgvcindia.com)
IDG Ventures India is a leading technology venture capital fund in India. The fund is part of IDG Ventures, a global network of technology venture funds with over $5.5 billion under management with over 220 investee companies and 10 offices across Asia and North America. By combining the IDG platform — an unparalleled combination of global publishing, market research (IDC), and conferences and exhibition resources — with years of hands-on experience in early-stage company building, IDG Ventures India helps its investee companies understand their markets better and achieve leadership position ahead of competition. IDG Ventures has been an early investor in digital consumer companies such as Ctrip, Netscape, Baidu, Tencent, BabyCenter, Sohu, Vancl and VinaGame. In India, IDG Ventures has invested in leading digital consumer companies such as Myntra, Brainbees (FirstCry.com) Vserv Digital, Valyoo (Lenskart.com), Apalya Technologies, Sourcebits Technologies, Ozone Media and Actoserba (Zivame.com).

About Vertex Venture (www.vertexmgt.com)
Vertex Venture is the wholly-owned venture capital subsidiary of Temasek Holdings Pte Ltd. Vertex was established in 1988 and it is today the longest operating venture capital firm in Asia. We are headquartered in Singapore with more than 25 investment professionals spread across our offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Bangalore, Taipei, Silicon Valley and Singapore. Vertex focuses on investing in early stage, disruptive opportunities. In terms of sectors, we invest mainly in the Information Technology, Mobile and Healthcare sectors. With our long history of venture investing experience and coupled with providing the right amount of financial and business support, Vertex has been successful in building and nurturing many young start-ups into leaders and champions in its industries. For example, we have been a key and early investor in Gemplus (now called Gemalto), Creative Technologies, Reebonz, Clearbridge Biomedics, 91Wireless, IGG, Meilele, GrabTaxi Holdings and Reverse Logistics Co.