This week in Silicon Allee’s news round-up, there is a new kind of flight comparison search engine while Rocket Internet continues to focus on developing markets and Partech comes over all early stage with its new funds.
Online travel agency tripsta.de has launched what is says is the first flight price comparison platform which analyses airfares over six months. Price Radar‘s algorithms compares flight costs for the next half a year on more than 2,500 domestic and international routes, with the aim of saving travellers hundreds of euros by taking a long-term view.
The six-month comparison is twice that of its rivals according to the company, which is based in Athens with an office in Berlin. Flight price can fluctuate up to 80 percent depending on demand, and so if fliers are flexible they can save plenty of money.
Philip Brinkmann, CEO of tripsta, said: “It is our mission to bring new products to the market that make planning and booking travel on the Internet easier. We wanted to develop a solution to make the billions of existing bits of flight data available for a more comprehensive flight price comparison.”
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Partech Ventures has announced its Silicon Valley-style venture and seed funds will close with a total value of $215 million (€158.4m). The Paris-based VC firm, which has offices in Berlin and San Francisco, will launch Partech VI with $175m as well as its first seed fund, Partech Entrepreneur, with $40m.
The company said the new money would enable it to finance up to five times more innovative projects from their earliest stages.
Philippe Collombel, a senior partner in Paris, said: “This set up inspired by Silicon Valley is quite uncommon in continental Europe. This will give us the means to implement a strong and active support strategy to benefit the best entrepreneurs from the inception of their project onwards.”
“This successful fundraising gives us the means to implement an international support strategy for high growth companies regardless of their stage of maturity,” added Jean-Marc Patouillaud, another senior partner in Paris, while also announcing the promotion of Gabriel Matuschka as head of the Berlin office.
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Rocket Internet has made its first move into real estate classifieds with the launch of global brand Lamudi in 12 countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America. The Berlin-based incubator has been concentrating on developing markets in recent years, and this move will come as no massive surprise.
Lamudi will enable users to find property for rent and sale, including houses, apartments, land and commercial real estate. The platform is intended to be a trusted presence in a fragmented market, operating under a high level of transparency. It is currently available in Algeria, Bangladesh, Colombia, Kenya, Mexico, Morocco, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Ruganda. Lumadi had previously been active in some markets under different names.
Erwin Sikma, CEO of Lamudi Asia, said: “The feedback from real estate developers, agents and customers has been unanimously positive. We are very bullish on the real estate classifieds market and aim to establish ourselves as the new number one in emerging markets.”