Heygo, a livestreaming platform for travel, has raised $20 million in a Series A round.
The investment is lead by Northzone with Lightspeed Venture Partners, Point 9 Capital, TQ Ventures, Ascension, the Fund and angel investors also participating.
Heygo enables users to travel from home regardless of physical, financial and environmental challenges.
The company provides virtual tours of cities, attractions and other activities and experiences in more than 90 countries.
The platform’s guides, who create the tours, can share the tours on their own live channels and earn tips from users.
Heygo says it saw a 300% growth in bookings in January compared to the same month last year and it recently hit two million bookings.
John Tertan, CEO and co-founder, says: “We want to create a space that enables people to share their stories and passions with an international community in a very intimate, personal, and raw way. It’s incredible to see thousands of people make Heygo a part of their daily life and see tour guides, cooks, performers, historians, gardeners, hikers and other creators flourish with entirely new audiences.”
The company, which is about to launch a new streaming app, also plans to invest further its its platform and provide features to make sharing and connecting easier.
Michiel Kotting, partner and Northzone, adds: “Heygo is one of those exceptional cases where a company has created a service that you feel should have always existed. Their interactive, guided streams are the Twitch equivalent of the hugely popular travel show and documentary genre, creating a new category of immersive world travel from home.”
Heygo is not alone in this category with Amazon launching virtual tours such as visiting landmarks in 2020. The company later widened its offering to include small group experiences.
Airbnb also capitalized, with its virtual experiences, on the consumer desire to engage with world, while locked down by pandemic restrictions.