Shanghai, September 15, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Myou Business Travel Cloud Platform, a comprehensive solution provider in the TMC industry, announced it has secured tens of millions of RMB in Series A funding. This round was jointly completed by Oriental Fortune Capital, Borun Investment, and Yingdong Investment, with ZuoYu Capital serving as the exclusive financial advisor for the transaction.
Myou Business Travel Corporate Logo
According to analysis data from multiple institutions such as GBTA (Global Business Travel Association), China's business travel market will surpass that of the United States in 2016 to become the country with the highest business travel expenditure globally. However, in contrast, there are still many gaps in China's current business travel management—90% of enterprises rely solely on small and medium-sized travel agencies for the simplest of travel bookings. Moreover, with the arrival of the zero-commission era for agency fees, the burden of advancing funds for enterprises, the huge investment in internet technology, and the difficulty of integrating a full product line all pose real barriers, making it difficult for small and medium-sized agencies to advance on the path of corporate travel management. What seems like a promising big cake is hard to know where to start.
The independently developed business travel cloud platform by Myou addresses various pain points such as the difficulty of internet transformation for local TMCs, integration of a full product line, funding advances, and operations. It provides one-stop comprehensive solutions for TMCs. These include:
System solutions: solving human resource issues, improving work efficiency, and reducing labor costs
The system solution of the Myou Business Travel Cloud Platform improves work efficiency for small and medium-sized TMCs while freeing up more manpower to develop incremental markets or reduce labor costs. For enterprises, it offers various booking tools such as PC front-end, mobile app, and WeChat, improving the efficiency of company-level travel bookings. Features such as policy settings, behavior control, and data reports can all be easily achieved through the system, laying the foundation for TMCs to serve enterprises more professionally and efficiently.
Product solutions: integrating better resources, backend search and comparison, improving profit margins, and expanding survival space
Currently, the Myou Business Travel Cloud Platform has integrated eight major full product lines for business travel, including air tickets, train tickets, hotels, car rentals, insurance, MICE, visas, and value-added services such as airport lounges. The large and comprehensive product library achieves the goal of one-stop procurement for TMCs and can even provide competitive prices through the backend search and comparison function, improving TMC profit margins and expanding survival space.
Financial solutions: solving the issue of funding advances, providing capital support, and unlocking larger markets
The Myou Business Travel Cloud Platform ensures a complete and truthful record of data within the transaction loop, allowing for more effective risk control. It has established strategic partnerships with numerous banks, funds, factoring companies, and other financial institutions to provide TMCs with flexible and diverse low-cost capital support solutions, meeting the funding needs of TMCs of different sizes and types, and breaking through the bottleneck of business expansion caused by a lack of funds.
Operational support: standardized services and branded management
Myou provides TMCs with comprehensive operational support, ranging from market development and internal management to brand image and customer service. High-standard training and support make TMCs more advanced in concept, more efficient in management, and more meticulous in service.
Zhang Haibin, founder and CEO of the Myou Business Travel Cloud Platform, said: "Although entrepreneurship is a battlefield without gunpowder, and we should talk less about sentiment and do more hard and solid work, as a passive entrepreneur, I am indeed driven by a mission to get to where I am today, and that is‘to improve the level of business travel management for Chinese enterprises’. I believe only companies with a sense of mission can truly go far and do well. We believe in the division of labor and that professionals should do what they do best. We also believe in and affirm the value and important role of TMCs in the business travel management of Chinese enterprises. Therefore, we are determined to become the most outstanding comprehensive solution provider in the TMC industry. We hope to join hands with TMCs to accomplish this great and interesting mission. We are still far from success, but our team will definitely continue to tread carefully and sprint forward with all our might."
As the exclusive financial advisor for this round of funding, Hu Weidong, founder of ZuoYu Capital, also pointed out that the blue ocean market of business travel management for small and medium-sized enterprises in China has enormous potential yet to be tapped. Myou aims to become the Alibaba of China's travel management field. Through the cloud technology platform built with dual-layer SaaS, it solves problems such as weak procurement capabilities, low technical abilities, high pressure for funding advances, poor operational capabilities, and low brand recognition for many long-tail small and medium-sized travel management companies in the market. It also provides an important tool for small and medium-sized enterprises to truly enter an era of informationalized, standardized, and highly efficient travel management.
The funds raised in this round by Myou will be used to consolidate its existing market position, further expand and explore markets in second-, third-, and fourth-tier cities outside major hubs through a series of market activities such as the "Business Travel China Tour," as well as for technological upgrades of the Myou Business Travel Cloud Platform and research and development of big data. Within the year, the number of domestic branches will increase to 30, achieving full coverage in South China, North China, West China, and East China. With a credit line of several hundred million RMB, it will help TMCs unlock a travel market worth hundreds of billions of RMB. Myou once again thanks all peers and investors for their attention and welcomes those with insight to join in creating and witnessing a new face for the industry.
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