Israeli air ticket optimization startup Whizar has raised $2.7 million in a financing round led by Anna Partners, which specializes in travel tech investments. Talma Travel and Tours, controlled by Erez Shmul, the first investor in Whizar, increased its holdings in the current round.
"Our solution, which combines artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data, is the optimal solution to this complex mathematical problem. The algorithms developed by the company lower the ticket prices substantially," says Whizar CEO Amir Balaish. His company has just finished raising $2.7 million.
Balaish, CTO Armon Avrahamy, and CPO Tor Leelo, three veterans of IDF intelligence Unit 8200 with backgrounds in higher education and technology, founded Whizar. After being demobilized, they worked in various startups that achieved exits. Most of Whizar's employees are also Unit 8200 veterans, most of them R&D and data science personnel.
Whizar provides a system for forecasting ticket prices for travel agencies. In less than a year after being founded, the company supplied the system to one of the leading travel agencies in the US and to the largest ticket distributor in Europe. Whizar currently has dozens of active customers, and is in the process of reaching agreements with dozens more. Its customers include several of the world's leading travel agencies. Aggregate ticket sales by agencies connected to Whizar's system currently total over $30 billion annually. The company recently began cooperating with the world's largest air ticket distribution agency for travel agents in order to install its system in the White Label product. The company is projected to triple its staff in the company year in order to supporting connection to tier-1 agencies that have already signed contracts with the company.
Whizar estimates that US travel agencies alone could save $11 billion annually by optimizing the purchase of tickets.
Whizar is a graduate of the SigmaLabs accelerator, and is an active partner in Israel Travel Tech Startups (ITTS), the Israeli travel-tech community founded by Itai Green.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on December 29, 2019
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