A London Business School start-up, ITNery, just closed a heavily oversubscribed seed round. Most of the funds, raised over just three months, came from future customers and Limited Partners of Sussex Place Ventures. Members of the Board of Directors of the Association of Independent Tour Operators (AITO) and the Board of Directors of the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) are amongst the investors. Advisors to ITNery include Tony Wheeler, Co-Founder, Lonely Planet and Richard Downs, Founder and CEO, Iglu.
The start-up is entering the multi-billion pound B2B travel industry space, to provide up-to-date pricing and availability information of tour products to the fragmented global market of tour operators and travel agents. The team is actively building the first version of the online platform with the help of future customers and have already selected five beta sites for the product trials.
Several London Business School faculty and mentors have been involved with ITNery since its inception. John Bates, Fellow of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, is the Investor Director and Jurek Sikorski, Entrepreneurship Mentor in Residence, is actively involved in helping the start-up with the overall customer development strategy. Kevin Evans, Ben Hallen, Martyn Williams, Keith Willey and Rupert Merson have also helped the start-up.
ITNery’s highlights to date include being one of the six finalists, out of over 100 applicants, in the British Airways Business Life Big Idea Competition in Travel. They were also the only team, with a current London Business School student, that was selected to pitch at the recent Enterprise 100, which has subsequently led to interest from three external tech investors.
Founder and CEO, Sunil Oberoi, is currently an EMBA student at London Business School. Oberoi, along with the rest of ITNery’s London Business School team, Rami Banna, Thomas Portier, Matthias Hovelynck and Ryan Kelly, have recently been shortlisted as one of the three finalists, out of 26 applicants, for the London Business School Business Plan Competition and they will be pitching at the Entrepreneurship Conference on 21st February.
The start-up is currently looking for a Non-Executive Director from the travel industry to complete the Board and several people from London Business School to join the execution team.
