FindMyAdventure, a Pakistani tourism startup, announced it has entered into a global merger and acquisition deal with GoZayaan, an online travel agency from Bangladesh providing booking solutions for flights, hotels, inter-city buses, tours.
The deal is backed by GoZayaan’s existing investors, Nordstar Partners, DST Global Partner Fund, and Alexander Rittweger. Last year, GoZayaan closed its $2.6 million seed round which was led by Wavemaker Partners and joined by Southeast Asia-focused VCs Ratio Ventures, 1982 Ventures, Iterative, Century Oak Capital along with current and former Airbnb Execs.
“One of the core reasons for this acquisition is the similarity between Bangladesh and Pakistan in terms of geography, user behavior, internet penetration and digital travel booking. The goal is to ensure the best travel experience for all their customers who are at the forefront of everything,” a statement by the company said. According to sources, GoZayaan invested more than $3.5M in FindMyAdventure.
Komail Naqvi, founder of FindMyAdventure and now the Pakistan Country Manager for GoZayaan said, “We’re very excited to take this partnership forward. Our vision with FMA is aligned with GoZayaan but on a much broader level. For us, this is now a regional problem that we’re focused towards solving together as one team. We’re now backed with the best investors around the globe and their collective interest in the Pakistani travel market shows that we still have a lot of work to do.” Ridwan Hafiz, founder of GoZayaan noted, “Entering the Pakistan market is the first step towards GoZayaan’s grand vision of expanding and strengthening the digitally-enabled travel ecosystem across South Asia.”
The merger will enable a more engaging experience for GoZayaan’s consumers and the company will add more end-to-end automated functionality of offering flights and hotel bookings, both domestic and international, together with its continued services of trips and tours, on a single platform.
“Joining forces will play a key role in shaping the future of travel across South Asia and will impact greatly in improving the digital ecosystem of travel. The goal of making travel accessible perfectly aligns with this merger and the company is looking forward to spreading its footsteps on foreign land with bigger market penetration entailing a boom on the South Asian OTA market,” the company’s statement added.
