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.
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
Chizuko Kimura has become the first female sushi chef in the world to win a Michelin star, fulfilling a promise she made to her dying husband to continue his legacy. The 54-year-old Japanese chef regained the Michelin star her late husband, Shunei Kimura, won three years ago for their Sushi Shunei restaurant in Paris. For Shunei Kimura, the star was a dream come true. However, the joy was short-lived. He died from cancer just three months later in June 2022. He was 65. The following year, the restaurant in the heart of Montmartre lost its star rating. Chizuko Kimura insisted that the new star is still down
While China’s leaders use their economic and political might to fight US President Donald Trump’s trade war “to the end,” its army of social media soldiers are embarking on a more humorous campaign online. Trump’s tariff blitz has seen Washington and Beijing impose eye-watering duties on imports from the other, fanning a standoff between the economic superpowers that has sparked global recession fears and sent markets into a tailspin. Trump says his policy is a response to years of being “ripped off” by other countries and aims to bring manufacturing to the US, forcing companies to employ US workers. However, China’s online warriors
RSS