Orlando, Florida — We are thrilled to announce today a total of US$3.5 million in funding, an investment that is expected to accelerate CuddlyNest’s leadership by funding expansion of our product strategic growth initiatives and new product features.
This funding will furthermore be used to scale the team with exceptional global talent, especially across our Engineering and Product teams.
“I’m thrilled with this milestone. The support of investors has been a significant show of commitment to our vision and paves a new way for us to do better — and go bigger — with our business model,” said Ritesh Raj, COO and Co-founder of CuddlyNest, who founded CuddlyNest with Haitham Saead back in 2017.
“As travel habits shift, there is an increased need for search options curated for their emerging needs and newfound pain points,” he added. “Our core focus is to design the ultimate and most intuitive search results page, and to ensure inventory always matches search intent, and with a wide variety at that”.
Serving the drastically-increased demand for more accommodations with flexible cancellation is an emergent core objective, as properties with free cancellation comprised the majority of our bookings over the past six-month period.
We additionally plan on launching innovative features to fulfil the rising consumer demand for sustainable and purposeful travel, distinctly highlighting the energy-saving and eco-friendly amenities actively implemented by properties. The launch of advanced new filters, planned for 2022, will allow users to identify these properties intuitively and with complete transparency.
Prior to this funding round, we raised US$6 million during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
At CuddlyNest, we offer the lowest aggregate commission fee on the global Online Travel Agency (OTA) market, setting out to revolutionize the booking system by cutting unnecessary travel fees with our fee-sharing model.
Competitors’ high commission fees have been increasingly eroding property owners’ profit margins and deterring them away, and this fee-sharing model allows property owners to take control of their earnings by customizing the exact amount of the commission rate that they would shoulder.
In an effort to empower property owners, we will shortly be launching the CuddlyNest Care Program wherein the commission fee is waived for eighteen months for those that are eligible.
Over the past year, we've grown drastically, adding key leadership positions as well as strengthening our core teams.
With increased global vaccination rates, were optimistic for the wave of travel rebound, having already witnessed healthy recovery from the effects of the pandemic on the travel market.
We expect to raise a larger round of funding in 2022. To date, we have raised over US$14 million in funds in private investment.
