Boats at the Damnoen Saduak floating market in Bangkok, Thailand.
Courtesy of Klook
Online travel agency Klook–cofounded by Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia alum Eric Gnock Fah–announced Wednesday it raised $100 million from private equity firm Vitruvian Partners, bringing the unicorn startup’s total funds raised to over $1 billion.
Klook declined to disclose its latest valuation but confirmed it is a unicorn, a startup with a valuation of over $1 billion.
The fresh capital will go towards Klook’s “next phase of growth and innovation,” the company said, including an “expanded” AI partnership with Google Cloud that aims to improve customer experience, merchant operations and internal productivity. So far, Klook has adopted Google Cloud’s Gemini foundation model to automate translations for 10 languages, while using other generative AI tools to review code and write content, such as descriptions of travel listings.
“We believe Vitruvian’s investment and its deep thematic expertise in the global travel experience market will help further drive Klook’s growth by strengthening its operational capabilities and expanding its reach,” said Sophie Bower-Straziota, partner at Vitruvian Partners, in a statement about the investment.
With roughly €20 billion ($20.7 billion) in assets under management, London-based Vitruvian Partners has backed over 80 companies since its establishment in 2006, including Hong Kong billionaire Shing Chow’s logistics company Lalamove and Estonian billionaire Kristo Käärmann’s cross-border payments service Wise. In the online travel space, Vitruvian’s investments have included flight search website Skyscanner, which was acquired by Chinese travel giant Trip.com for approximately $1.7 billion in 2016, and Travel Counsellors, a website for self-employed travel agents.
Cofounded in 2014 by Fah, CEO Ethan Lin and CTO Bernie Xiaokang Xiong, Klook helps its users book transportation, hotels and activities through its website and app. It currently offers over 570,000 activities across 2,700 destinations globally. In 2018, Klook became one of Hong Kong’s rare startup unicorns following a $200 million funding round; in 2023, it became profitable for the first time.
Klook, which claims it has “key hubs” in both Hong Kong and Singapore but is not headquartered in either city, has attracted new investors amid a post-pandemic uptick in tourist demand. In December 2023, Klook raised $210 million in a Series E+ round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from billionaire Jean Salata’s EQT Private Capital Asia and Atinum Investment, a backer of billionaire Seo Jung-jin’s Celltrion.
Still, Klook faces steep competition from online travel incumbents, such as Trip.com and Airbnb, as well as regional apps. Last December, Taipei-based travel superapp KKday received about $70 million from investors for M&A deals in Asia to increase its market share, and to invest in AI. Two months prior, last September, Indonesian unicorn Traveloka–which gained unicorn status in 2017 and hit profitability in 2023–announced a partnership with the Tourism Authority of Thailand to offer discounts on accommodations for Traveloka customers visiting the country.
Gross travel bookings across online travel–spanning flights, hotels and vacation rentals–made a full recovery to pre-pandemic levels “earlier than anticipated” in Southeast Asia, according to a report last December jointly prepared by Google, Temasek and Bain. Outside of their core businesses, online travel agencies like Klook “have been successful” at monetizing travel-adjacent products like financing and insurance, the report added.
