Ctrip co-founder invests in Vietnamese travel startup Vntrip

Vntrip’s leadership team/ Photo credit: Vntrip

Vietnamese travel startup Vntrip said it has secured an undisclosed new funding round from Ctrip co-founder Fan Min and existing investors.

Prior to this round, Vntrip had raised over US$20 million from investors such as John Wu, the former CTO of Alibaba, Swiss private bank IHAG,  and Hong Kong’s Hendale Capital.

Founded in 2014, the company originally focused on providing travel solutions to domestic consumers. However, in 2018, it pivoted to serve businesses as “the US$2 billion corporate travel segment in Vietnam is still fragmented, and no company has been able to establish dominance,” said Le Dac Lam, co-founder and chairman of Vntrip.

Le said that the startup’s pivot to corporate travel was modeled after Navan (formerly known as TripActions), a company estimated to be worth US$9.2 billion.

“After Covid, companies have implemented more cost-cutting measures, leading to increased demand in initiatives involving technologies that can save operating expenses, especially in travel,” Le added.

Vntrip offers a travel management system to corporate clients to streamline the booking and approval processes for hotels and flights, enabling them to save time and cost. The company said it’s working with 1,500 corporate clients across the country, including Unilever, FPT, Sabeco, Carlsberg, and VPBank.

Vntrip will use the fresh capital to expand its B2B offerings to existing clients and support its domestic expansion. It claimed to have achieve a positive net cash flow as of December 2022.

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