Headout bags $30 million in funding led by Glade Brook Capital

In September last year, the company had raised $12 million from the same set of investors in the first tranche of series B funding.

“With travel rebound strengthening, Headout has delivered 800% growth since January 2021 by doubling down on domestic travel and local demand which used to be a minority segment pre-pandemic,” the company said in a statement.

The company said it will use the funds to accelerate its journey to $1 billion in annual sales by expanding to 500 cities in the next 24 months, to launch new verticals for domestic short-haul travel and build the next generation of technology products.

As a managed and a mobile-first marketplace of experiences, Headout leverages technology to actively standardise, upgrade and curate experiences provided by its partners across the world.

The company became earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation or Ebitda profitable in July 2021. So far, 10 million people from more than 190 countries have been on a Headout experience across more than 30 cities, according to the company.

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“The company is actively pursuing acquisitions in travel, entertainment and AR to build the future faster,” said Headout. A number of founders and operators, including Sriharsha Majety (CEO, Swiggy), Ankit Sobit (CTO, Postman) and Ranjeet Pratap Singh (CEO, Pratilipi), also participated in the funding round.

“With all of the previous raise still in our bank and our consistently profitable economics, we have all the firepower we need to focus on aggressive expansion worldwide and longer-term investments to aid broader recovery of all things IRL (in real life) experiences,” said Varun Khona, CEO, Headout.

Linda Guo, partner at Glade Brook Capital, said, “Now, more than ever, people crave in-person, local travel experiences. We believe Headout is building an exceptional platform to discover and book experiences.”

Guo said she expects the company to benefit owing to the onset of a global multi-year travel supercycle.