(By NT Balanarayan & Vikas SN) Online short stay accommodation booking site Oravel.com has raised undisclosed amount of investment from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Medianama has learnt from multiple reliable sources. When contacted, Oravel CEO Ritesh Agarwal confirmed that they have raised investment from two institutional investors but declined to disclose the names of investors or the investment size. Lightspeed Venture Partners Dev Khare declined to comment on it, saying he is currently out and can speak only on Monday. We have also texted him requesting a confirmation or a denial, but he is yet to respond since. Prior to this, Oravel had raised undisclosed amount of seed funding from angel investors like Fame Cinemas founder Shravan Shroff, former Starcom MediaVest Group South East & South Asia CEO Ravi Kiran, Everest Flavours managing director Anand Ladsariya, Nirvana Venture Advisors co-founder and chairman Amit Patni and Aditya Birla Private Equity CEO Bharat Banka. The company was also part of the first batch of VentureNursery's accelerator program and Oravel CEO Ritesh Agarwal had received a $100,000 grant as part of 2013 Thiel Fellowship program in October 2013, which Agarwal has told MediaNama, he has invested in the venture. Founded in February 2012, Oravel allows users to search for short stay rooms and apartments in India, quite similar to how AirBnB works. Users can list their serviced apartments, boutique properties and villas and travelers can book these properties from the site, although Oravel claims it lists only hand picked properties, based on the quality of the apartment. Operational Issues Oravel claims to have around 3,500 rooms across multiple locations in India,…
