Nairobi-based travel tech platform HotelOnline, has raised $320,000 from its existing investors and new investors such as Norway’s Trond Riiber Knudsen Group and Shravan Shroff , an early backer of India’s OYO Rooms, and the co-founder of India’s Venture Nursery, a startup accelerator. Shroff has joined the firm’s board of directors.
Havar Bauck, co-founder and Chairman of HotelOnline acknowledged that Shravan brings oversight and guidance to its board making it, even more, stronger as HotelOnline transitions into a profitable scale-up from a startup.
“We will use the investment to bolster our existing products and strengthen our focus on delivering outstanding quality to our hotel partners. We will focus on doing what we do best: Creating outstanding value for our hotel partners, and for our shareholders.”
Founded in 2014 by Endre Opdal and Håvar Bauck, the firm rebranded from Savanna Sunrise to HotelOnline after it merged with Polish traveltech startup Hotel Online.
The platform now provides a proprietary cloud-based property management system enabling online bookings for hotels away from its earlier life as an e-commerce and digital marketing outfit in the East African hotel industry.
To expand across Francophone Africa, HotelOnline acquired Senegalese Teranga Solutions to bolster its technology offerings. The two merged to create a traveltech industry leader in the global frontier markets. The companies individually had systems and business models that were complimentary and together they now have a cloud-based ecosystem platform for independent hotels – the first of its kind, making HotelOnline a global leader in frontier markets.
The firm had earlier planned to work with Nigeria’s HotelOga but it later found its structure confusing and abandoned the whole acquisition deal. Bauck said that HotelOga was bound to fail terribly because of that poor structure.
Bauck was also recently behind the acquisition of heartbeat Adventures by local startup Cloud9xp.
Promote your product, event, press release, or launch a report to a highly engaged tech and business audience. You can also take over our homepage for premium visibility and sponsor our monthly #TechNight events and podcasts and annual StartupEast Conference & Awards to maximize brand exposure.
Beyond reach and visibility, we have over ten years of experience in SEO-driven digital publishing and we are the best in the SEO market at helping brands grow organic visibility through high-quality editorial backlinks and strategic content placement. We are here to help you improve your search rankings and long-term discoverability. We also help improve AI discoverability, ensuring your brand is more visible across emerging AI-powered search and recommendation systems.
Your campaign will also be extended across TechMoran, BusinessTech.co.ke, and AfricanWomenNetwork.net, including their newsletters, giving you wider reach and engagement across East Africa’s leading digital audiences. Be part of the region’s biggest tech and business platforms monthly, quarterly, and annually.
Contact Sales