India’s HolidayIQ Raises Series C Funding, De-Merges From Singapore’s Wego

Bangalore-based online travel community HolidayIQ has announced today that it has raised series C financing from Tiger Global Management and Accel Partners. While the investment amount hasn’t been revealed, it’s perhaps more significant that HolidayIQ is also now de-merged from Singapore’s Wego, which is an online holiday booking service.

That merger happened in November 2010, and led to HolidayIQ growing a site that was localized for Singapore and Indonesia. The move into Indonesia came at around the same time that Wego itself opened a Jakarta office to tackle the burgeoning travel e-commerce market in Indonesia.

Though the funding amount was not made public, The Economic Times reckons it was Rs 26 crore to Rs 30 crore, which is nearly $5 million.

HolidayIQ is a specialist travel community site, not a booking platform, so HolidayIQ says in today’s announcement that it benefits from being fully de-merged and independent so that it “can provide travelers with truthful information not affected by any requirements to sell specific travel products.” Therefore, HolidayIQ is a sort of Yelp for your holidays – you can use it to find information, but not to book flights or hotels.

Founded in 2004, HolidayIQ says it now has reviews and resources for 30,000 Indian hotels and 1,300 nationwide destinations, and is used by 4.5 million Indian travelers every month for planning their trips. No mention is made of any Singaporean or Indonesian numbers.

Wego has an India travel search and booking site that launched in May of last year.