TRIPMYDREAM, a Ukrainian company that promises to find tourists the best deals for their money, has been declared the best travel startup of the year.
The
company won up to $500,000 in equity investment during the Seedstars Summit
2015 in Lausanne, Switzerland on March 3.
The proprietary
search engine on tripmydream.com.ua helps travelers select a vacation
destination from a range of options the company’s researchers have collected
data on. Users simply enter their requirements: vacation type, date and budget.
There are currently five possible vacation types on the website: sea, exotic,
winter resorts, sightseeing, and spa & therms. Users can also search for
vacation deals in a specific location.
The co-founders of
the startup, Andrey Burenok and Taras
Polishchuk, started work on the project in 2013. The first
public web-version of the service went online in May 2015.
Since then, up to
1,000 people, mostly from Ukraine and Russia, have used the service to buy
plane tickets and book hotel rooms using the service.
The service
continues to grow, and an updated version with a new user interface, functions
and design is to be released in three to four months. “We are so dedicated and
obsessed about the product that one of us sold his apartment to make this
happen, while another two left their jobs and are fully dedicated to what we
do,” said Burenok while presenting the project on stage at the
Seedstars Summit 2015 on March 3.
As about 70 percent
of users visit the website via mobile devices, so development of a mobile
application is now a priority for the startup. The mobile app is expected to be
released at the beginning of the summer of 2016.
This is a promotional video created by TRIPMYDREAM for the launch of the service in 2015.
Burenok says the
unique content of the website, which was gathered by a team of 20 people over
two years, is one of the things that puts his service ahead of the rest. “We
combined travelers’ experience with data mining and put this into our new
search engine,” he told the Kyiv Post on March 6.
The
Seedstars Summit 2015 featured the best startups
selected
from over 3,000 applications from live pitching events in 54 countries
. TRIPMYDREAM came out top among the 10
finalists in the travel startups category.
Iryna Savchuk can be reached at [email protected]. The Kyiv Post’s IT coverage is sponsored by Ciklum, Steltec Capital, 1World Online and SoftServe. The content is independent of the donors.
