The round was led by Venture Catalysts, with participation from Japanese VC firm REAPRA Ventures and a couple of angel investors

The Deyor Camps team

Deyor Camps, an online supplier of alternative accommodation such as tents, mud houses and treehouses, and adventure activities in India, has secured an undisclosed sum in pre-Series A funding led by seed investment platform Venture Catalysts, in exchange for a 5 per cent equity.

Existing investor Dheeraj Jain, and new investor Dr. Ritesh Malik also participated. In addition, Japanese early-stage VC firm REAPRA Ventures also joined the round. This is REAPRA’s — which has invested nearly US$30 million in 60 startups across Indonesia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Singapore, Thailand, Korea and Malaysia — maiden investment in India.

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Deyor Camps will utilise the funds to strengthen its core marketing activity, team building, and technology integration. It will also use the capital to develop quality content and enhance its experiences for adventure travellers.

Chirag Gupta, Co-founder and CEO of Deyor Camps, said, “The latest investment gives us the resources to expand quickly and strategically into new locations, innovate rapidly, and deliver on our vision to organise the fragmented adventure travel sector in India.”

Deyor Camps had earlier received strategic investment from Naspers Group-backed Travel Boutique Online (TBO), a B2B platform for travel agents, which allows it access to a network of more than 20,000 travel agents.

Founded by Chirag Gupta, Aakaar Gandhi, Himashu Aggarwal, and Gautam Yadav, Deyor Camps is a supplier for adventure travel — be it alternative accommodation like tents, mud cottages, treehouses, house boats, caravans and cabanas, or adventure activity experiences like scuba diving, paragliding, paramotoring, and river rafting. Deyor Camps has integrations with 72-plus online travel agents (OTAs) like MakeMyTrip, goibibo, Booking.com, and Agoda.

Deyor Camps also retails its 600 alternative accommodation sites and 1,000 adventure activity vendors on its online platform. It is also selling to institutions like schools, colleges and corporates and has organised travel trips with institutions like University of Delhi, Tata Teleservices, MDI Gurgaon and XLRI, to name a few.

The startup will first consolidate the fragmented market in India and has plans for expansion in Southeast Asia and South and East Africa by 2018.

Speaking on the investment, Dr.Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, Co-founder and President, Venture Catalysts, said, “As India’s first and only chain of branded adventure camps and accessories, Deyor Camps has addressed the most painful challenges on the supply side by creating a robust distribution channel as well as through strong OTA integrations and networking. It also has a very strong and focussed founding, and is well positioned to take advantage of the exponential growth in the demand for adventure travel as a category leader.”

Image Credit: Deyor Camps

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