ONDA, South Korea’s Hospitality Tech company, closed its Series B funding round. Despite the current funding winter for startups, ONDA doubled its valuation from its Pre-Series B round, and received high evaluation for its growth and profitability.
ONDA raised about $10 mil USD(12 billion won)in Series B funding from a consortium backed by TS Investment, NAU IB Capital, Industrial Bank of Korea, Square Ventures, K Bridge Ventures, and Breeze Investment. This brings ONDA’s total investments up to 25.5 mil USD(31.5 billion won). NAU IB followed up its participation in the Pre-Series B round onto the current Series B round.
Established in 2016, ONDA is a premier B2B SaaS(Software as a Service) company in the hospitality sector. ONDA HUB (formerly ONDA GDS) is an integrated sales platform that covers 60~70% of South Korea’s online accommodation market. Its main business model relies on the following solutions:
➢ “Hotel Plus” – a hotel SaaS solution including a fast and easy online accommodations booking management system
➢ “Pension Plus” – a SaaS solution focused on vacation rentals and other small to medium sized travel accommodations
➢ “DIVE” – a new SaaS PMS for hotels
By this quarter, ONDA will be launching “DIVE” – a hotel PMS that it has been preparing for the past two years. From its field testing, DIVE has been evaluated as an easy, intuitive system that would increase efficiency as compared to the current cumbersome hotel PMS offerings.
ONDA has just launched “DIVE” – a hotel PMS it has been preparing for the past two years. And already great reports are coming in from local clients and partners.
For example, a local premier resort hotel belonging to a global top hotel brand, successfully switched from its older PMS to ONDA’s new DIVE. The hotel found DIVE to be an easy, intuitive system that significantly increased its efficiency in operations.
With this Series B funding, ONDA plans to accelerate its efforts on the digital transformation of the domestic hospitality industry, and develop a system to attract inbound travel.
ONDA is gearing up for its overseas expansion. Hyun-seok Oh, CEO of ONDA, is directly leading a global business project group for ONDA’s launch into the South-East Asian hotel market. ONDA plans to provide a variety of solutions to assist outbound Korean tourists finding local hotels, in turn, creating a win-win solution for both local hotels and Korean travelers.
TS Investment which led this current funding round said, “We confirmed on the ground that the domestic tourism industry was rebounding, and above all, made our decision to invest in ONDA based on the capability of its CEO and team. We believe in their capacity and drive for growth.”
Hyun-seok Oh, CEO of ONDA added, “We’re grateful for the continued recognition of ONDA’s potential by our investors. We plan to support the growth of Korea’s tourism industry in this post-covid stage, both domestically and abroad.”
