Helion, Blumberg invest $1.5m in India's Mygola for US expansion

Bangalore-based Mygola already raised a $1 million seed round in late 2011 with the help of Blumberg and Dave McClure, the founder of Silicon Valley-based accelerator 500 Start-ups .

Mygola - which was set up by former Google executive Anshuman Bapna - wants to establish an office in Silicon Valley. It will be headed by Bapna who will focus on business development and marketing.

Prateek Sharma, who co-founded Mygola with Bapna in 2009, will remain in Bangalore while Ashish Gupta of Helion - which also backed other online travel start-ups such as MakeMyTrip and redBus.in - will join the board of Mygola.

"The US is a very important market for us, we get 25-30% of our revenues from there," Bapna told LiveMint. "Business development will be mostly from a partnership perspective-most of the partners we work with are in the North American geography."

Mygola has partnered with global travel website Expedia.com, earning commission every time it redirects customers to Expedia for itinerary bookings.

The company - which originally started as a pay-what-you-want online travel concierge - is also planning to revive its old business model in a new format within the next few months. Previously, users seeking travel advice were permitted one question free with a guaranteed response within 24 hours. If they paid a minimum $1 extra, they could ask a second question, and so on.

The online travel market has developed into an attractive space for venture capital investors both in India and in emerging Asia as a whole. Earlier this month Matrix Partners India bought a significant stake in budget hotel booking site Stayzilla.

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• Topics
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• Helion Ventures
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