MakeMyTrip buys stake in hotel solutions firm Simplotel

BENGALURU: Simplotel was founded a year ago by former Amazon employee Tarun Goyal and ex-McAfee software engineer Savan Bellur. The SAAS-based platform offers an array of hotel marketing solutions including responsive web designs, search engine optimization and hotel booking engines.
"We have improved the discoverability of hotels' websites on various search engines and optimized traffic to enhance the conversion ratio," said Goyal.An alumnus of the University of Maryland, Goyal spent 16 years working in firms like JDA Software, Amazon, Expedia and Myntra.
Simplotel has over 100 hospitality clients in India. Goyal said that despite a growing appetite for hotel reservations online, many hotel websites faced teething trouble and were not internet or mobile ready. "Higher website load time has reduced customer engagement. Many websites are static and don't display properties effectively," he added Simplotel offers subscription and pay-for-performance models to its clients.
Goyal said the seed money from MakeMyTrip would be used to double his team size to 30 by 2015-end, and improve sales and support services to its clients.
MakeMyTrip recently launched a $15 million (over Rs 90 crore) innovation fund to support early stage companies in the travel space. Deep Kalra, founder & group CEO of MakeMyTrip, said, "The fund will be focused on young and new ventures in the travel technology space for our market. This is an additional prong of our inorganic growth strategy."
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