Hotel technology solutions provider DerbySoft has raised $9 million in Series D round from technology-focused venture capital firm DCM.
The Shanghai-based company will use this new fund to strengthen its Metasearch Manager product and accommodate the demand by increasing the team size and improving operations.
Also, the company will use the capital to explore new opportunities like marketing services for hotels based on "real-time aggregated hotel booking data".
When asked DerbySoft about the new marketing service, a company official says:
"We cache so much real-time data for our hotel customers, many of them have been interested in us providing analytics on their data, to help them get a better understanding of trends such as mobile bookers vs PC bookers, length of stay trends per region, advance booking trends etc.
"Although a lot of this is available through our MetaSearch Manager, not all of our hotel customers are using that yet, and would like to see it on more of an enterprise level. "
DerbySoft's services include hotel distribution connectivity, metasearch marketing (MetaSearch Manager), and CRS caching services.
Co-founder and CEO of DerbySoft, Ted Zhang, says:
"The demand for our MetaSearch Manager platform and related services has been almost overwhelming since we launched it publicly late last year."
Co-founding partner of DCM China, Hurst Lin, says:
"The vast collections of Big Data associated with processing millions of hotel transactions daily provides an opportunity for DerbySoft to further their growth by providing new data-related services."
Founded in 2002 by Ted Zhang and Feng Ou, the company has offices in Dallas, Texas, London, Beijing and Tokyo.
Its customers of over 1,000 hotels include large hotel chains such as IHG, Hilton, Carlson- Rezidor, Hyatt, and Marriott, and small regional chains such as Home Inns, JinJiang Inns, and Greentree Inns.
DCM's other travel industry investments include eDreams Odigeo, Yongche (raised $60 million recently), and Tuniu (filed for $120 million IPO in US).