Ziptrrip Buys HelloTravel, Eyes India’s MICE Travel Boom

Ziptrrip Buys 18-Year-Old Travel Marketplace HelloTravel to Crack India’s MICE and Corporate Travel Market

Mumbai-based corporate travel startup Ziptrrip has acquired HelloTravel Online Private Limited — its first buyout since launching three years ago. The deal, announced May 25, 2026, brings HelloTravel under Wayfarers Technologies Private Limited, Ziptrrip’s parent company, as a wholly owned subsidiary. On paper it’s a platform bolt-on. In practice, it’s a calculated push into two of corporate travel’s fastest-growing and most complex segments: MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions) and business leisure.

A Strategic Bet on MICE and Business Leisure

India’s MICE market is projected to exceed $4 billion by 2030, and business leisure — blended corporate and personal travel — is fast becoming a procurement priority for mid-to-large enterprises. Ziptrrip is betting that winning in these segments requires more than technology; it requires a supply network that takes years, not months, to build. HelloTravel offers exactly that. With over 7,000 verified travel partners, 2 lakh curated experience packages and a presence across 10,000+ destinations, the acquisition gives Ziptrrip the supply depth and destination expertise it would have otherwise spent years assembling. MICE execution, in particular, demands hyper-local knowledge and reliable last-mile delivery — areas where HelloTravel’s 18-year-old partner relationships carry real weight. India’s appetite for structured group and incentive travel is only growing, and platforms with verified supply chains are increasingly the ones corporates trust with large-ticket programmes.

Ziptrrip’s Three-Year Growth Arc

Ziptrrip’s growth since its 2020 founding has been disciplined and capital-light. The platform has clocked over 2 lakh corporate trips across 650+ enterprise clients, competing in a market historically dominated by incumbent travel management companies. The startup turned profitable in FY 2024-25 — posting revenue of ₹1.47 crore, a 140% year-on-year jump — and swung to a net profit of ₹3.8 lakh after recording a loss the prior year. It has raised roughly $491,000 across four rounds, the latest a $238,000 seed round in August 2024 anchored by angel investor Prantik Dasgupta. That Ziptrrip is executing an acquisition at this stage — with a lean balance sheet — signals confidence in the synergy logic rather than a capital-heavy M&A playbook. It echoes a broader trend of Indian startups using strategic buys to consolidate market position quickly, much like InMobi’s move in adtech to deepen its mobile advertising capabilities.

Co-founders Shan Prabhakaran (CEO) and Rishabh Agarwal (COO), both former Mahindra Group executives, have built Ziptrrip around automation, AI-driven policy compliance and dynamic pricing — a backend that now has a significantly larger supply network to draw from.

HelloTravel’s 18-Year Marketplace Legacy

HelloTravel is not a typical startup acquisition target. Founded in 2008 by Pankaj Agarwal — an IIM Indore alumnus — the Noida-based platform operated for nearly two decades as one of India’s largest travel agent marketplaces before being demerged as an independent entity in 2018. It never raised external equity, scaling entirely on the strength of its partner ecosystem and organic community of 1.5 million followers. By March 2025, HelloTravel had served over 1 crore travellers and grown revenue 33% year-on-year to ₹1.79 crore — narrowing its net loss from ₹1.13 crore to just ₹9.7 lakh. For a bootstrapped, 18-year-old marketplace legacy business, that trajectory reflects genuine operational resilience. India’s travel sector has long rewarded platforms that build community alongside commerce — a dynamic explored early in experiments like India’s travel social network Travelibro, which tried to merge discovery with social planning.

Founders Exit, Team Stays

Under the terms of the deal, HelloTravel founders Pankaj Agarwal and Mohit Shrivastava will exit the business. The existing operational team, however, remains in place — a deliberate move to preserve the partner trust and execution standards built over nearly two decades. Continuity at the team level is critical when the core asset being acquired is relationships, not technology.

“HelloTravel brings deep partner relationships and destination expertise built over years, which allows us to expand meaningfully into MICE and business leisure,” said Shan Prabhakaran, CEO of Ziptrrip. “Through this, Wayfarers aims to craft a powerful and differentiated thesis within the corporate travel landscape.”

Rishabh Agarwal added: “Combined with Ziptrrip’s AI-led infrastructure and demand capabilities, it creates a strong platform to deliver more customised and high-quality travel experiences — especially in segments like MICE where execution and reliability are critical.”

What This Deal Means for India’s Corporate Travel Market

India’s corporate travel market is undergoing a structural shift. Enterprises are consolidating vendors, demanding integrated platforms that manage bookings, expenses and event logistics in one place. Standalone TMCs are losing ground to tech-native platforms that demonstrate policy compliance, cost savings and real-time reporting.

Ziptrrip’s acquisition of HelloTravel signals where the competitive frontier is moving. The combined entity — bridging AI-driven travel management with a battle-tested experiential supply chain — positions Wayfarers Technologies as one of the few players capable of serving the full corporate travel stack: from daily business travel to large-scale MICE programmes. In a year already marked by bold consolidation plays — including India’s biggest pharma acquisition — it’s clear that market leaders across sectors are doubling down on inorganic growth to accelerate scale. The company has also flagged global expansion as a longer-term ambition, a road that becomes more credible with a deeper domestic foundation.

For the Indian startup ecosystem, it’s an early marker of consolidation in travel tech — and a reminder that in sectors built on relationships, legacy and scale, the smartest acquisitions often aren’t the biggest ones.

Author

Sachin

Sachin Sidharth is a Digital Marketing professional with a master’s degree in Digital Marketing from Coventry University, UK. He has 10+ years of blogging and online marketing experience. He currently heads Digital Acquisition for a leading London-based Fintech firm. At KnowStartup.com He focuses on writing Digital Marketing guides and manages...

Sachin Sidharth is a Digital Marketing professional with a master’s degree in Digital Marketing from Coventry University, UK. He has 10+ years of blogging and online marketing experience. He currently heads Digital Acquisition for a leading London-based Fintech firm. At KnowStartup.com He focuses on writing Digital Marketing guides and manages KnowStartup's Digital Agency rankings of firms across multiple cities in India. You can reach him on Linkedin.

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