Routehappy Raises $3.3M in Funding to Expand Airline & Distributor Products

Investment will accelerate development and sales of Routehappy Hub, a SaaS platform that enables airlines to organize and deliver their product attribute content wherever they sell flights

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Routehappy

Dec 10, 2014, 06:00 ET

NEW YORK, Dec. 10, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Routehappy, the product differentiation platform for air travel, today announced it has secured $3.3M in a new round of venture financing led by iNovia Capital with participation from new strategic investors including PAR Capital Ventures, Buddy Media founder Mike Lazerow, and respected industry veterans Seth Brody, David Sandberg, and Porter Gale. Existing investors High Peaks Venture Partners, Contour Venture Partners, and Vocap Investment Partners also participated.

"Routehappy is focused on data, content, and tools to help airlines and distributors differentiate their product offerings," said Robert Albert, CEO at Routehappy. "This new funding will allow us to expand our team and accelerate development, trialing, and sales of Routehappy Hub to airlines and distributors worldwide. We're privileged to work with a group of investors who recognize the importance of helping the air travel industry better monetize flight shopping through product differentiation. Our investors appreciate that Routehappy can achieve this complex task in a capital efficient way."

"Routehappy is taking on the difficult problem of differentiation that the industry has struggled with for years," said Paul Reeder, investor and former Board member of ITA Software and principal at PAR Capital Ventures in Boston, MA. "As airlines continue down the path of unbundling, they increasingly will rely on tools to help merchandise their product offerings in order to best serve their customers and to maximize their return on investment. Routehappy is making this happen."

With Routehappy Hub, airlines have a cloud-based tool that enables them to:

organize their included and ancillary product attributes in a single place
easily create business rules to target attributes to flights, fares, and flyer types
access the content they need from the Routehappy Hub API for use in their own channels
grant access to their content to 3^rd parties including distributors, integrators, and ad agencies

There are unlimited use cases for airlines to have organized and targeted product attribute content that can be easily delivered throughout the flight distribution system. Uses include displaying relevant product attributes like extra legroom seat upsells, new aircraft amenities, and fare bundles with rich descriptive and visual content within flight search results on airline.com, distributor.com and in digital marketing. In addition, as IATA's New Distribution Capability (NDC) standards become adopted by airlines and distributors, they will need a content source from which to draw content to enhance their upsell offers. Retailers and hoteliers everywhere know that bringing product features to life makes them more differentiated and appealing to customers. Flight shopping should be similar.

This funding comes on the heels of the recently announced news that Routehappy has partnered with global online travel leader Expedia, Inc. and Australia/New Zealand's leading corporate travel and expense management business Serko, giving both full access to Routehappy's proprietary Scores & Happiness Factors API.

ABOUT ROUTEHAPPY:
Routehappy is the product differentiation platform for air travel, providing the industry with data, content, and tools to improve flight shopping. Routehappy's Scores and Happiness Factors product rates flights worldwide and provides amenity data like seat, entertainment, Wi-Fi, and plugs by flight. Routehappy Hub is a SaaS platform that enables airlines to organize and deliver their product attribute content wherever flights are sold, improving flight shopping. Routehappy is based in New York.

For more information, visit www.routehappy.com

ABOUT iNovia:
iNovia Capital is a venture capital firm that partners with exceptional entrepreneurs to build successful technology companies in high-growth sectors. The team is comprised of founders, builders and engineers that are passionate about building market-leading technology companies. iNovia has $275M under management across three seed and early-stage funds.

For more information, visit www.iNovia.vc

For more information on the venture capital organizations listed in this release visit:

High Peaks Venture Partners, Contour Venture Partners and Vocap Investment Partners

Media Contact: North 6th Agency, Inc. (For Routehappy) 212-334-1033, [email protected]

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SOURCE Routehappy