ParaBooking, an online paragliding booking portal from FlutterBuy Ecom Ventures, has raised Rs 50 lakh in a seed funding round under the Him Startup Yojna of the Department of Industries, Himachal Pradesh.
The company has undergone incubation at IIT Mandi Catalyst in Himachal Pradesh and fine-tuned its technology and business model from world-class mentors.
ParaBooking operates through a two-pronged model for generating revenues: adventure sport (paragliding) and SaaS tools for adventure tourism operators/agencies across the nation. The startup plans to use the raised capital to double down on its technology and go to market.
Founded by Ankush Rana, Deepak Abrol, Sohail Lalani, and Vikram Thakur in 2021, ParaBooking is an online portal for customers to book paragliding flights in some of the major destinations across India like Bir-Billing, Dharamshala, and Manali.
According to the founders, They started ParaBooking with the aim of bringing safety and regulations to the adventure tourism industry in India. Along with the website to book paragliding flights, The platform additionally offers an Application for tourism operators to digitize and automate their operations which are sold on a SaaS model.
Over the 18 months of operations, The startup claims to have facilitated more than 5,000 flights across India and is venturing into trekking and adventure sports like kayaking.
“One of the biggest problems with adventure sports in India is that the focus on safety and a good experience is so low that a customer gives it up after one attempt. At Parabooking, we started out with a mission to provide the best customer experience by creating an onboarding process of certified pilots,verified equipment, along with insurance that enables Heli rescue in paragliding for the first time. A local weather station for latest local developments in the weather can help choose the best timings for Take-Offs and avoid unnecessary anxiety. This funding from IIT Mandi will help us move the needle in this mission of ours to take safe and secured adventure sports to the masses,” says Ankush Rana, CEO of Parabooking.
“The safety of travellers visiting our state will remain a priority for our tourism board, and towards this goal we will focus on enabling ventures that are catering to the needs of the safe adventure sports in the state.” says Sh. Rakesh Prajapati (IAS) Director, HP Industries.
“The Saas application is built with data federation capabilities specially customised for the real-time operational nature of adventure sports. On one hand, it manages the assets and resources, and on the other hand integrates flexibly with multiple independent data sources covering the booking portal, insurance API integration, and real-time resource (pilot and equipment) assignments to name a few. In the future, we look forward further to integrating with real-time telemetry through IOT and tracker devices to further enhance the security aspect of adventure sports,” said, Prasenjit Dey, Technical Advisor.
Source @Indianstartupnews
