TravelPlus goes from disruption to discovery

The first real signal came not from a boardroom, but from a breakdown. When travel came to a halt during the pandemic, the business of moving people exposed its weakest links. Bookings froze, cancellations piled up, and what had long been treated as a back-office function suddenly became a frontline operational challenge. For TravelPlus, the moment was less about disruption and more about discovery.

“Covid was a big learning experience,” says Vaibhav Aggarwal, Co-founder, Promoter, MD and CEO. “When you are stuck, you go talk to customers. Our FabHotels business, started in 2015, had gone to zero, but we started listening to our customers, and their feedback became the blueprint for our new business, TravelPlus.”

What emerged was not a pivot, but a reframing. Corporate travel, Aggarwal realised, was never just about booking tickets or hotel rooms. It was a complex system of approvals, compliance, reconciliation and control – areas where inefficiencies had long been normalised. As travel resumed, it returned altered: more domestic, more distributed and far more cost-conscious.

“Post-Covid, travel came back in a new avatar,” Aggarwal says, “and that has significantly increased demand from enterprises looking for managed, policy-compliant travel solutions.”

This demand is playing out against a powerful macro backdrop. Global corporate travel, valued at Rs73.6 lakh crore in 2024, is expected to grow to Rs108.1 lakh crore by 2030. India is on an even steeper curve, with its corporate travel market projected to nearly double from Rs3.6 lakh crore in FY25 to Rs6.9 lakh crore by 2030.

Yet beneath this growth lies a deeply fragmented system. Corporate travel in India has historically operated through decentralised processes: employees booking through multiple channels, expenses processed separately, and approvals managed manually. The result is limited visibility, delayed reconciliation and significant inefficiencies in cost control.

Operator DNA

TravelPlus is built around addressing this structural gap. The company positions itself not as a booking platform, but as infrastructure for corporate travel. Its model is rooted in what Aggarwal describes as “operator DNA”, derived from nearly a decade of experience in building and managing FabHotels. Since 2015, that business has cumulatively onboarded 1,379 properties, developing deep capabilities in supplier vetting, quality standardisation and operations across Tier-2 and Tier-3 markets.

This operational backbone now feeds into a managed marketplace of over 25,000 hotels across India, spanning economy to premium segments. In a market where nearly 69 per cent of corporate hotel demand lies in the economy category – and 95 per cent of that supply remains unbranded and fragmented – the ability to aggregate, standardise and control supply becomes a decisive advantage.

Accel, Qualcomm Ventures and Anupam Mittal participated in the initial funding round in July 2015. Goldman Sachs joined in 2017, while Panthera Growth Partners came in during April 2023. The company has raised a total of Rs467 crore so far, says Aggarwal.

For investors, the conviction was rooted as much in execution as in opportunity. “I have backed a lot of founders over the years. What I look for above everything else is resilience and the ability to take feedback from reality. Vaibhav and Adarssh have both in abundance. They built FabHotels, Covid took it to zero, and they came back with something bigger. Those are the kind of founders you back without hesitation,” says Anupam Mittal, Founder, Shaadi.com.

For enterprises, the shift from fragmented systems to a unified platform has been immediate. “Managing travel across five separate entities was a challenge before introducing TravelPlus: multiple vendors, no unified visibility, and complex GST reconciliation,” says Binu Nair, Vice President & Head HR, TI India.

“TravelPlus changed that completely. We now have one platform with entity-wise invoicing, centralised dashboards, and insights that help us optimise spend continuously. Combined with negotiated rate contracts and GST-compliant billing, we have seen an effortless travel experience across all our entities.”

On top of this supply layer sits an integrated, technology-enabled platform that brings together booking, approvals, expense management and compliance workflows into a single interface. Employees and travel desks can plan and execute trips end-to-end, covering hotels, flights, ground transport and MICE, without switching systems.

Corporate travel is not just booking, it’s compliance, reconciliation and control,” says Adarssh Mnpuria, Co-founder, Promoter, Whole-Time Director and CFO.

The platform embeds approval hierarchies, policy enforcement and real-time dashboards, enabling enterprises to monitor travel spend continuously. Automated GST-compliant invoicing and expense capture reduce manual intervention while improving audit readiness: longstanding pain points for finance and admin teams.

That operational shift is visible across large global organisations. “TravelPlus has been an incredibly reliable partner for over 3 years now. From domestic stays to international bookings, group movements, and relocations – everything runs smoothly and without any hassles,” says Aniket Aggarwal, Associate Director – Procurement, AB InBev.

Technology sits at the core of this transformation. “We are fundamentally a tech platform managing travel end-to-end,” Mnpuria says. Automation and artificial intelligence are used to optimise pricing, streamline workflows and improve booking efficiency, while generating data that enables enterprises to track patterns and control costs more effectively.

For high-growth companies, this scalability becomes critical. “As one of India’s fastest-growing startups, our travel needs expanded rapidly. TravelPlus scaled with us seamlessly from a few dozen bookings to over 1,500 bookings a month across flights, hotels and relocations,” says Sunil Kumar Panda, Manager II – Admin & Facilities, Zepto. “The duplicate detection feature alone has prevented significant cost leakage, and the single-vendor GST invoicing makes our finance team’s life much easier. The 24/7 support ensures our teams can travel without friction.”

Business model

The company’s client base now spans sectors from manufacturing and pharmaceuticals to consumer internet and financial services, reflecting the universality of the problem it addresses. As organisations expand across geographies, travel becomes both a necessity and a cost centre that demands tighter governance.

The business model is built around supply-side economics. TravelPlus earns commissions from hotels on every booking: the platform is provided free to enterprise clients. This structure means revenue scales directly with travel volumes.

That integration often deepens over time. “When Panthera first invested, TravelPlus was just getting started; barely 2 years in. But even then, the proof of the team’s execution was visible: strong cohorts, outstanding customer references, and a market where few were executing at this level,” says Rikin M Kapadia, Panthera Growth Partners.

 “Over time, the partnership has only grown stronger. TravelPlus now handles our air travel and event requirements as well, and their wallet share has consistently increased year after year,” says Madhur Ohri, Manager – Travel Operations, Zomato (Eternal). “The single-vendor GST invoicing alone helped us recover nearly Rs1 crore annually in input tax credits. For a fast-moving organisation like ours, TravelPlus has become integral to how we manage travel at scale.”

Financially, the company has shown a sharp turnaround. Revenue rose to Rs716.3 crore in FY25, with losses narrowing significantly, and in H1 FY26 it reported Rs400.4 crore in revenue and Rs32.2 crore in profit – marking a shift to sustained profitability.

The company is now preparing to enter the capital markets through its parent, Travelstack Tech Limited, which has received final observations from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). The proposed IPO comprises a fresh issue of up to Rs250 crore and an offer for sale of up to 26,852,969 equity shares by promoters Vaibhav Aggarwal and Adarssh Mnpuria, along with investors including Anupam Mittal, Accel India IV (Mauritius) Ltd, Global Private Opportunities Partners II LP, Panthera Growth entities, XTO10X Mauritius Pte Ltd, and Qualcomm Asia Pacific Pte Ltd.

“TravelPlus’ hotel suppliers are MSMEs who typically expect upfront payments, so the fund raise will primarily be utilised for working capital,” says Mnpuria. Of the proceeds, around Rs135 crore is earmarked for working capital, Rs45 crore for debt servicing, with the balance allocated to general corporate purposes and technology investments.

Aggarwal underscores that promoter dilution will remain limited. “We are selling about 15 per cent of our shareholding but retaining a substantial majority of about 85 per cent,” he says.

Competition, however, is defined less by rivals and more by inertia. “Our real competition is spreadsheets, fragmented offline vendor relationships, and manual processes that enterprises have lived with for years,” Aggarwal says. “We are not displacing another platform. We are replacing a broken system.”

“Panthera was not betting on a concept. We were backing an execution that was already working, in a market large enough with attractive margin pools to build something significant. That combination is rare. The IPO is validation of what we saw early,” adds Kapadia.

The broader industry direction reinforces this view. Corporate travel is increasingly moving towards integrated, policy-driven platforms that consolidate booking, expense management, and compliance into a single workflow. What was once a logistical function is becoming a data-driven lever for cost optimisation and operational efficiency.

Beyond this broad base, specific sectors are emerging as strong growth drivers. BFSI, for instance, is seeing a surge in travel linked to branch expansion, audits, collections, and on-ground customer engagement. Pharmaceuticals and healthcare depend heavily on field force mobility, while infrastructure and manufacturing companies drive travel through multi-location project execution. High-growth digital businesses and start-ups are also scaling travel rapidly across cities and functions.

This demand is playing out in a large but structurally inefficient market. India’s corporate travel sector (excluding MICE), valued at Rs3.6 lakh crore in FY25, remains fragmented, with manual processes, compliance gaps, and inconsistent service delivery creating significant operational overhead. Within this, the hotel segment accounts for 34 per cent of the market but contributes nearly 55 per cent of the profit pool – highlighting where value is concentrated. Unlike air travel, corporate hotel bookings require active supplier management across fragmented inventory, creating higher barriers to entry while also enabling stronger unit economics.

In that sense, TravelPlus is not just riding the recovery of business travel, it is aligning with a structural shift in how enterprises manage mobility itself. For Aggarwal, the ambition remains sharply defined. “We are not building a consumer hotel brand. We are building infrastructure for corporate travel.”

In a market long defined by fragmentation, that may be the most consequential journey of all.