36Kr reported that global travel photography company Roto Travel has recently raised 50 million yuan in its Series A funding round. Purple Bull Startups was the lead investor, and 36Kr Fund, Plum New Cognitive Fund and New Potential Energy Fund joined in. Yuze Capital was the financial advisor.
The company secured tens of millions of yuan in its Pre-A round financing from Plum New Cognitive Fund and Innoangel Fund in August last year. It also raised 2.8 million yuan in the angel round invested by Haifeng Partners in December 2016.
Rota Travel is the first in the sector to have completed successive funding rounds. It intends to use the proceeds to consolidate its business and establish a travel content portal and community pooling together travel resources and travel photography KOLs. Roto Travel is building the profile of its contracted photographers as KOLs who will develop professionally-generated content and user-generated content for the community.
Established in 2017, Rota Travel dispatches photographers to provide photoshoots and related services at travel destinations. Its travel photography services are targeted at tour groups, hotels, attractions and individuals. The photographers are independent operators taking assigned orders from the platform. The company recently cooperated with HSBC to enable payment and receiving payments at global destinations.
Mr. Haijun Hang, founder and CEO of Roto Travel, said it has serviced a total of one million users and it offers services in 14 destinations across Southeast Asia, Europe, Middle East and Africa. It will further expand its service to 40 cities worldwide in the next two years. The number of orders has been increasing at 36.7% month by month since the end of 2018. It is also attracting overseas users in Europe, Middle East, Africa and other regions.
Roto Travel has developed an H5 system supporting photo downloads, membership program and community sharing. Travelers can receive their photos three hours after a photo-shoot. The platform has 160,000 members at present.
Roto Travel will expand its business to global markets and cooperate with overseas social media platforms in the future. (Translated by Elena)
