Travelguru, Indian travel portal, raises $15M amid lots of competition

Travelguru, an online travel portal in India, has won a commitment of $15 million from Battery Ventures and Sequoia Capital India for its second round of funding.

India has become a hot area, lately, especially in the travel industry, where its growing middle class is beginning to travel more.

Silicon Valley firms have been leading the charge on investing. As mentioned, Google’s founding investor, Ram Shriram, has invested in competitor Cleartrip, alongside Kleiner Perkins. Gabriel Venture Partners has led a $6 million round into MakeMyTrip. Norwest Venture Partners, another Silicon Valley firm, has backed Yatra.

According to ContentSutra, MakeMyTrip is close to announcing its follow-on funding of $10-12 million from Helion Venture Partners, Sierra Ventures and SAIF Partners. ClearTrip is also said to be raising about $10 million early next year. With this funding for Travelguru, these figures could go up.

Travelguru raised an undisclosed amount of funding earlier this year from Sequoia’s Indian office, formerly known as Westbridge. At the time, the company said it expected to raise up to $10 million total over two rounds, but that has obviously changed.

Travelguru says its advantage is its relationships with hotels. It boasts access to more than 72,000 hotels worldwide and alliances with 500 airlines globally — part of its strategy is to offer travel packages that include hotel stays.

It says it has 70,000 customers a month, and wants to grow by more than 30 percent month to month in the near future.

It is not clear why Mark Sherman, of Battery Ventures in Menlo Park, would be investing in an Indian company when he is based here. VentureBeat hopes to catch up with him shortly to ask him.