Atomico Invests $16m in OneTwoTrip
Atomico is pleased to announce our $16 million investment in OneTwoTrip. Since OneTwoTrip’s launch in 2011, the company has established itself as the leading online travel agency in Russia, with over $450 million of annualised bookings.
OneTwoTrip offers a unique and truly globally competitive service in a way that few companies have been able to achieve. When we first spoke to Peter Kutis, the CEO and Founder of OneTwoTrip, in early 2012, we immediately understood that he was unique in having identified and executed on the real underlying needs of the travel market.
After successfully contributing to the launch of the travel booking service AnywayAnyday in 2008, Peter stepped back to re-imagine how to best service the travel industry. Peter understood that users wanted more value added services from their travel provider while keeping the simplicity of the interface at its core.
With a small and dynamic group of people, Peter has focused on creating the most efficient, elegant and innovative travel service not only in Russia, but anywhere in the world. OneTwoTrip offers critical travel information such as probabilities of flight cancelations, age of the aircraft, distance between seats, while offering the most competitive prices to its customers. The benefits of the innovation also extend to the back-end of the sales process, where, to take just one example, the ticket refunds and exchanges are fully automated — a well-known problem in the airline industry. In just one year OneTwoTrip has built an incredible 35% share of the Russian market.
Online businesses today are highly capital efficient and allow entrepreneurs like Peter to build a category winner extremely quickly. This levelling of the playing field, where access to capital is no longer a barrier to entry, empowers entrepreneurs to succeed based on their merits.
Dmitry Falkovich, the OneTwoTrip Chairman and the founding partner of an existing investor Phenomen Ventures, has also been of significant importance for the success of OneTwoTrip. His experience with investments inside and outside of Russia has proven to be valuable support for Peter, the OneTwoTrip team and Atomico.
The success story of OneTwoTrip further proves our belief that great companies can come from anywhere. We look forward to working with both Peter and Dmitry, helping them to continue building the winning company in this sector — as it enters a new chapter in its growth.
