Taipei-based travel start-up KKday has closed its latest US$75 million funding round, helped by a pivot to domestic package tours after the COVID-19 pandemic devastated the global tourism industry this year.
The Series C funding was led by the Taiwanese government’s National Development Fund and the Tokyo-based Cool Japan Fund, while existing investors, including Monk’s Hill Ventures and MindWorks Capital, also participated.
KKday, which previously focused on offering ground package tours at foreign destinations, saw sales plunge 90 percent to hit rock bottom in March, but its shift to domestic tourists has since paid off, founder and CEO Ming Chen (陳明明) said in an interview.
“We were able to secure new funding because investors saw that we acted swiftly and that we were able to execute changes during a crisis,” the 47-year-old Chen said. “Taiwan’s domestic travel began to rebound in May and it exploded in late June. We saw sales from domestic travel in Taiwan grow five times from the same period of last year in July and August.”
With the government mobilizing quickly in the early days of the outbreak, Taiwan has kept COVID-19 cases to less than 600 and only reported seven virus-related deaths among a population of about 24 million.
Some domestic tourist spots have seen visitor numbers surge this year, a contrast with the struggles elsewhere.
A July report by the UN Conference on Trade and Development showed that the US$1.7 trillion global tourism industry is forecasting annual losses of up to 80 percent, while airlines around the world have said that they need as much as US$200 billion in bailouts.
Other markets that KKday operates in — including Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea — have seen a similar rise in domestic travel, Chen said.
Sales at the company, which was founded in 2014 and has more than 5 million users, could return to about the same level as last year toward the end of this year, he added.
Even in the post-COVID-19 world, people will continue to take trips as leisure travel is a “rigid demand,” Chen said.
However, they might choose shorter flights over longer ones, and prefer trips with fewer companions over traditional tour groups that squeeze a large number of people onto buses, he said, which creates opportunities for his business.
KKday is planning premium offerings such as yacht trips for those with high spending power who are stranded at home.
The start-up plans to use the funds raised to expand a platform called Rezio that helps suppliers, particularly those in Southeast Asia, digitize their services, Chen said.
Semiconductor shares in China surged yesterday after Reuters reported the US had ordered chipmaking giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to halt shipments of advanced chips to Chinese customers, which investors believe could accelerate Beijing’s self-reliance efforts. TSMC yesterday started to suspend shipments of certain sophisticated chips to some Chinese clients after receiving a letter from the US Department of Commerce imposing export restrictions on those products, Reuters reported on Sunday, citing an unnamed source. The US imposed export restrictions on TSMC’s 7-nanometer or more advanced designs, Reuters reported. Investors figured that would encourage authorities to support China’s industry and bought shares
FLEXIBLE: Taiwan can develop its own ground station equipment, and has highly competitive manufacturers and suppliers with diversified production, the MOEA said The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) yesterday disputed reports that suppliers to US-based Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) had been asked to move production out of Taiwan. Reuters had reported on Tuesday last week that Elon Musk-owned SpaceX had asked their manufacturers to produce outside of Taiwan given geopolitical risks and that at least one Taiwanese supplier had been pushed to relocate production to Vietnam. SpaceX’s requests place a renewed focus on the contentious relationship Musk has had with Taiwan, especially after he said last year that Taiwan is an “integral part” of China, sparking sharp criticism from Taiwanese authorities. The ministry said
US President Joe Biden’s administration is racing to complete CHIPS and Science Act agreements with companies such as Intel Corp and Samsung Electronics Co, aiming to shore up one of its signature initiatives before US president-elect Donald Trump enters the White House. The US Department of Commerce has allocated more than 90 percent of the US$39 billion in grants under the act, a landmark law enacted in 2022 designed to rebuild the domestic chip industry. However, the agency has only announced one binding agreement so far. The next two months would prove critical for more than 20 companies still in the process
CHANGING JAPAN: Nvidia-powered AI services over cellular networks ‘will result in an artificial intelligence grid that runs across Japan,’ Nvidia’s Jensen Huang said Softbank Group Corp would be the first to build a supercomputer with chips using Nvidia Corp’s new Blackwell design, a demonstration of the Japanese company’s ambitions to catch up on artificial intelligence (AI). The group’s telecom unit, Softbank Corp, plans to build Japan’s most powerful AI supercomputer to support local services, it said. That computer would be based on Nvidia’s DGX B200 product, which combines computer processors with so-called AI accelerator chips. A follow-up effort will feature Grace Blackwell, a more advanced version, the company said. The announcement indicates that Softbank Group, which until early 2019 owned 4.9 percent of Nvidia, has secured a
RSS