SaaS firm Itilite raises $29 million from Tiger Global and others

Bengaluru: Travel and expense (T&E) management software-as-a-service (Saas) platform Itilite has raised $29 million in a funding round led by New York-based Tiger Global and Dharana Capital, with participation from existing investors Matrix Partners India and Tenacity Ventures.

With the new round, the company plans to continue to invest more in product innovations, brand building and scaling up its go-to-market teams.

“Our go-to-market is sales and marketing where we will be hiring more people from India and we will also spend on our product branding,” cofounder Mayank Kukreja told ET.


Itilite, founded in 2017 by Kukreja and Anish Khadiya, offers a T&E management solutions to companies ranging from Fortune 500 blue-chips to tech unicorns.

Presently the company serves firms like Byju’s, Swiggy, Zetwerk, Automation Anywhere, Praj HiPurity and Page Industries. Itilite’s digital T&E solution is used by companies to improve the travel booking experience and optimise costs.

The Bengaluru-based startup had raised $13 million in its previous funding round led by Greenoaks Capital and Vy Capital in 2020. Since 2020, Itilite has seen five-times growth as companies worldwide are rapidly shifting to tech-first travel and expense management solutions. The startup was backed by a private equity firm Matrix Partners at the seed funding stage.

“We started entering the US market two years ago and the traction is quite good. We are planning to double down there. However the first and biggest market for us is India,” Kukreja said.

Itilite presently has around 500,000 users from over 300 companies in India and the US, thanks to the acceleration in digitisation in the T&E space.

“Over the last two years our business was hit, transactions were not happening (due to Covid). However, companies realised travel is coming back and looked to digitise their travel process, because of which our customer base increased,” Kukreja said.

In 2021, Itilite launched an AI-powered virtual T&E consultant Mastermind, which provides real-time recommendations to companies to optimise T&E spending and processes.

Kukreja said that business travel is a $1.4 trillion industry and around 80-90% is still managed by offline travel agencies. “We are planning to tap that market and bring more companies online”, he said.