Accor leads in Treebo’s INR 118 crore Series D funding round

Other participants include BCCL, Elevation Capital, Matrix Partners, Bertelsmann, Ward Ferry and Mozambique Holdings’ Deputy MD Deepak Parayanken

Treebo Hotels has raised Rs 118 crore ($16 million) in its Series D funding round from a group of investors, led by French hospitality major Accor. Other participants in this funding round included its existing investors – Elevation Capital, Matrix Partners, Bertelsmann and Ward Ferry.

Media company Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd and Mozambique Holdings’ Deputy MD, Deepak Parayanken, also invested in the Bengaluru-based hotel company. Nine months ago, Treebo had raised a bridge round of $6 million from its existing investors, including SAIF Partners.

Talking about this development Accor’s CTO Floor Bleeker, said, “We are delighted to partner with the talented team of Treebo. Their software solution, Hotel Superhero, is exactly the kind of technology that the hospitality industry needs today. It is cloud based, intuitively designed, and comprehensive in its functionalities. We are looking forward to using their solutions to improve guest experience and operational efficiency.”

Accor had engaged with Treebo for investment opportunities for close to two years, though this did not materialise. The French hospitality major’s recent investment in the budget hotel chain is part of its broader partnership under which Treebo will deploy its cloud-based, SaaS hotel management software (HMS), Hotel Superhero, at various Accor hotels globally. The software is already operational at select Accor properties, Treebo said in a statement.

Hotel Superhero is an integrated HMS for hospitality chains and standalone hotels, which Treebo relaunched last year. It includes modules like property management, point of sale, rate planning and inventory management, housekeeping, and guest assist. Treebo’s SVP for engineering, Mayank Khandelwal, will head this business unit.

Sidharth Gupta, Rahul Chaudhary and Kadam Jeet Jain co-founded Treebo in 2015 as a tech-enabled manchised aggregator for budget hotels. It currently manages a network of over 500 hotels across 100 cities in India.

OYO Accused Of Listing Treebo Hotels Without Clearances

Gurugram-based hospitality unicorn OYO has found itself in a fresh battle against its competitor, Treebo. The company’s executive allegedly submitted “invalid” no-objection certificates from about 70 hotels to the OTA Booking.com .This was reportedly done to change the ownership listing of the properties to OYO from rival Treebo.

To begin with, when hospitality chains like OYO and Treebo list a hotel, they receive permissions from these hotels to promote the hotels on their websites as well as other OTAs like MakeMyTrip, Yatra, Booking.com etc.

The OTA said that after making necessary checks it had identified that the NOCs provided by OYO for these properties were “invalid”.

Booking.com reportedly said that it required accommodation partners to abide by all applicable laws and compliances. “There is a standard process that we follow at Booking.com for listing properties and the same process is being followed right now as well,” the company said.

OYO did not respond to Inc42’s queries on the matter till the time of publication.

The development comes at a time when the travel and hospitality industry has been severely hit by the Covid-19 pandemic and quarantines. OYO had recently told its employees that since the outbreak, OYO’s occupancy rate and revenues have dropped by more than 50 to 60% and the company’s balance sheet has come under severe stress.