UAE based travel website, Musafir.com has extended its operations to India, reports Economic Times. It says Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar had picked up a minority 7.5% stake in the company in June 2013.
Emirates247 reports that Tendulkar’s partnership in the company is supposed to cover a global marketing campaign for the company on print, radio, television and outdoor media.
Located in Mumbai, Musafir claims to be a premium-experience travel website offering flights, hotels and travel packages in 3,000 destinations around the world on over 270 airlines and in 46,000 hotels. When we checked the website, we noticed that it typically seems to offer only premium hotel options, however, different class options are available while booking flights.
The website also offers special tie-ups to organisations to manage their travel. The company claims to be currently managing the travel of 2,000 organisations. Musafir.com was founded by Mohammed Al Thani, Sachin Gadoya and Albert Dias in August 2007.
It is worth noting that in March 2012, film actor Salman Khan had also picked up a minority stake in the online travel portal Yatra Online Pvt. Ltd, in what appeared to be an endorsement deal.
Other recent developments in the travel sector
Travel planning website Mygola had raised $1.5 million as Series A funding led by Helion Venture Partners. Ashish Gupta from Helion Venture Partners has joined the board of the company.
Social travel marketplace Touristlink had recently raised undisclosed amount of seed funding from the African accelerator 88mph.ac and a group of private investors.
Stayzilla, a hotel booking site, had raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Matrix Partners, in return of a minority stake in the company.
Bangalore based Thrillophilia, a experience travel marketplace, had raised $200,000 in angel funding led by Hyderabad Angels with participation from iLabs Venture Capital Fund, Navlok Ventures and Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE-IIMA)
Earlier in July 2013, Online travel agency Via.com’s co-founders, Vinay Gupta and Amit Aggarwal had launched Tripfactory Pte Ltd, which runs travel related siteTripfactory.com. According to the website, the company will provide a search engine for travel related content on the web.
Some of the other players in the travel planning space include TripAdvisor, MustSeeIndia, TripIt, among others.
