Troop, the meetings planning specialist, has raised $8 million in Series A from a raft of high-profile travel investors.
The round was led by Steve Singh of Madrona Venture Group and founder of Concur, and supported by EPIC Ventures, Conexo Ventures, All Iron Ventures, Plug and Play Tech Center, Top Seeds Lab and Founders Factory.
Travel industry executives such as Trivago co-founder Rolf Schromgens, former Egencia president Rob Greyber, former Orbitz CEO Barney Harford and former SAP Concur presidents Jim Lucier and Mike Eberhard have also invested.
Spain and South Africa-based Troop plans to invest the funds in speeding up product development and integrations around booking and expense solutions.
Troop enables meeting organizers to arrange in-person group meetings by providing them with data to facilitate and improve meeting planning.
Denis Vilovic, CEO of Troop, a PhocusWire Hot 25 Startup of 2021, says: “When we started TROOP, we set out to do things differently. Instead of optimizing for how the travel industry sells, we evaluated what the business travel manager at an enterprise needs.
"They need ease of use, data on locations, ability to optimize for a broad set of goals including sustainability, spend and timing. And most importantly the ability to collaborate with colleagues. As we grow the platform to include deep integrations with booking and expense, TROOP will enable an entirely new and disruptive approach to corporate travel.”
Singh, who becomes chairman of Troop’s board, adds: “As companies around the globe embrace a distributed work model, the need for groups to get together is increasing. Planning, booking, and running meetings needs to be easy, whether the meeting is a five person meeting in a corporate office, a hybrid meeting where some attendees are traveling while others are not, or a large conference at traditional venues."
Singh recently become an investor in, and chairman of Spotnana, which launched recently with $41 million in funding.
He is also a backer of expense management technology specialist Center.
* Check this pitch for Troop from Vilovic, recorded at Phocuswright Europe 2021.