Yatra, the online major travel company is set to gradually raise $100 Mn of funding over the next three years, as recent regulatory filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reveal.
The filings state, “Under this shelf registration process, we may offer ordinary shares, preference shares, various series of debt securities or even warrants to purchase ordinary shares, preference shares and debt securities, either individually or in units, in one or more offerings, up to a total dollar amount of $100 Mn.”
According to the company’s group chief financial officer Alok Vaish explained that the company “don’t have immediate need of funds. We can raise money at any point of time over the next three-year kind of time frame. There is no specific description of offering right now or a specific description of a security.”
Yatra is a Gurugram-headquartered company founded in 2006 by Sabina Chopra, Manish Amin and Dhruv Shringi. The company specializes in providing various travel-related services, notably, domestic and international air ticketing, hotel booking, home stays, holiday packages, bus ticketing, rail ticketing, and tourist activities, among others.
Yatra now boasts partnerships with over 70,000 hotels all over India and over 800,000 hotels all over the world. It raised funding rounds from several prominent venture firm such as IDG Ventures, Vertex Venture Management, Norwest Venture Partners and other investors. The last funding round it raised was a venture debt funding or $15.4 Mn from InnoVen Capital in September 2017.
As per SEC filings, the company recorded a 40.8% year-on-year (YoY) growth in revenue standing at $52.7 Mn for the last quarter of 2017. In total, during the last quarter of 2017 the company registered profits above $3.6 Mn with adjusted EBITDA loss expanding from $2.9 Mn to $6 MN this year.
The earnings report also reveal that its revenue-less service cost from selling air tickets rose by 46% YoY to $21.4 Mn while that figure for hotels and packages jumped by 46.8% to $6.8 Mn during the last quarter of 2017.
However, despite the losses, Yatra has confidently made several acquisitions, such as Travelguru, Travel-Logs, Dudegenie and MGaadi in a bid to strengthen its growth and expansion.
Yatra is competing with major online travel firms such as MakeMyTrip, ixigo, TravelTriangle, ClearTrip, etc… for market shares. Currently, MakeMyTrip is the market leader generating record revenue of $172.5 Mn in 2017.
A report from Google India-BCG revealed that the travel market is set to be worth $48 Bn by 2020. Another report from IBEF suggest that the online travel space will account for 40-50% of total transactions of 2020.