Navan acquires India-based TMC as part of global growth

Navan – formerly TripActions – has made its fifth acquisition in two years, this time picking up Tripeur, a travel and expense management company based in India.

Terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed.

Founded in 2015, Tripeur provides a unified travel and expense solution for corporate travel.

In a statement announcing the acquisition, Navan co-founder and CEO Ariel Cohen said the company has “spearheaded the transformation of the Indian travel market from offline to online, so this acquisition enables Navan to immediately solve for local obstacles, such as direct connections to local low-cost carriers and automated GST [goods and service tax] reconciliation of employee expenses.”

According to the World Bank, India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. It’s also one of the top countries per capita for mobile data usage, and according to Phocuswright, mobile bookings in India are expected to account for 73% of all bookings by 2025.

Navan senior vice president of product Jannik Waessa said that growth and shift to mobile makes India an ideal market for the company to enter to capture new business, and the acquisition will also enable it to better serve existing Navan clients.

“We see a lot of our customers … having a multinational presence, and with that India is one of the markets where we see a lot of our customer base having local operations,” he said.

“So there is a certain need from our existing customer base of building out a proper solution for India.” Navan cited clients such as Unilever, Adobe and Thomson Reuters that need a global solution.

Waessa said Tripeur’s “deep understanding and deep expertise” in India and its local inventory, technology and support will be integrated with Navan’s platform. The Tripeur team will become part of Navan and, for now, the Tripeur brand will remain.

In the past two years, Navan has acquired Atlanta Events & Corporate Travel Consultants, Sweden-based travel management company Resia, Berlin-based Comtravo and Reed & Mackay.

When asked about plans for future acquisitions, Waessa said, “The idea is obviously to move into a more and more global solution and with that there is certainly the possibility for future acquisitions, but nothing concrete we can share at this point in time.”

Last fall there were reports the company had filed confidentially to go public. A few weeks later, the company raised $304 million in Series G funding, and then in December it picked up $400 million in credit facilities. 

When asked about the status of plans to go public, Waessa said, “IPO depends on a lot of different market conditions. Everybody has been aware of what’s going on in the markets, so in the end it very much depends on how the markets evolve.”

Some of Navan’s December credit funding, as well as a past credit round, came from the failed Silicon Valley Bank, which has now been bought by First Citizens Bank. In mid-March, Cohen participated in a PhocusWire LinkedIn “Let’s Hear It” audio event about the Silicon Valley Bank collapse and what it may mean for travel startups.

Listen to the full discussion below.