Cleartrip Gets “More Money Than Required!” - 18.5 M $!
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Talk about the roof giving way and a windfall of money falling from it and it just doesn’t stop raining money! Im sure if one were to visit the cleartrip office in mumbai a similar scene atleast in context of the news just in can be visualized. So more funding has come into the travel space and this time the beneficiary is cleartrip which has raised a whopping 18.5 Million $. Just convert that into rupees and you get an astronomical 75 crores approx. The people backing cleartrip with this whopping amount are DFJ (Draper Fisher Juvertson) who have pumped in 10 Million which there are a group of other investors who have contributed the rest of the millions which also includes Mahindra Ventures. I guess Mahindra’s interest in cleartrip can be attributed to its own mahindra holidays venture as well.
Im sure a lot of you are thinking..WOW…What the hell is a travel company going to do with that kind of money! Fund flights to the moon? Nah not yet! 
Well as per cleartrip’s own admission they seem to have raised “more money than required”. As Sandeep Murthy CEO Cleartrip states in this article that they will use this money to improve the website’s services. He also wants money on hand to build the company’s “offline” presence and for acquistions—both online and on the ground.
The online travel space is one of the most funded and also one of the most crowded spaces. The image below taken from this livemint article shows how crowded and funded this space actually is.. phew.. talk about money travels!
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Cleartrip is one travel site which started modestly with a good product (great interface) and backed by very strong investors (Kleiner Perkins like..). I think within a year or so there will be few take overs in this travel space which will make the numbers of major players to 2 or 3.
Consolidation…Consolidation…Consolidation…
Read between the lines.
The CEO clearly said the money will be used for acquisitions.
Thats what the funding is for.