Singapore travel management startup Navisteps raises $1m in pre-seed round

Singapore-based travel management startup Navisteps said it has raised US$1 million in a pre-seed financing round from angel investors including Yasuhide Fujii, a partner at KPMG Advisory Myanmar;  and Takuya Aiba, the founder of marine-related investment firm SpringLiner.

Amanda Tay (head of marketing and public relations), Ken Tan, and Charmaine Lim (founders) / Photo credit: Navisteps

Established in 2019, the startup combines “spend policies and approvals,” travel booking, expense tracking, and real-time reporting into one spend management solution. The platform provides a centralized dashboard along with expense report automation for businesses to keep track of their ongoing expenditures.

Founders Ken Tan and Charmaine Lim bring in years of experience from companies like Nomura Securities, Citicorp Investment Bank, Seedly, and ShopBack to the startup.

With plans to introduce new partner integrations and expense analytics for clients in the coming year, Navisteps said it looks to expand its team. It also intends to launch a flexible travel option that covers last-minute trip cancellations to tackle the uncertainties brought by Covid-19.

The company is also partnering with Southeast Asia’s largest online travel and lifestyle platform Traveloka to widen access to direct partnerships with several global vendors. The move gives Navisteps’ enterprise users access to exclusive inventory for flights and accommodation at competitive prices.

“While expense and travel management solutions are not new, they traditionally target large enterprises. We hope to bring the benefits of expense and travel management solutions to small and medium-sized enterprises through a subscription-based pricing model,” said Tan.

Nearly half of global companies don’t track the cost to process expense reports, and 43% of them still manage expense reporting manually, according to Tallie’s 2019 Travel & Expense Management Trends report.

See also: A roadmap for online travel’s long, painful path to recovery