Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada-based SaaS startup for the tourism industry RocketRez, announced in February 2021 that it has raised CAD 8.4M in a Series A funding round. The investment included US-based Blueprint Equity contributing CAD 6.4M in equity financing and new investor TIMIA Capital investing CAD 2M in revenue-based funding.
In recent months, RocketRez has also focused on expanding into new business domains within tourism, such as zoos, aquariums, museums, and observation decks. It will use proceeds from the funding round to continue these efforts in 2021. It also plans to increase its current 26-person team’s headcount by adding 16 and 19 members to it. The startup will hire for engineering, sales and marketing, and customer success positions. Recently, Monica Marics joined RocketRez as COO in November 2020.
RocketRez was founded in 2011 and provided an operating system for tourism and travel operators. The startup’s platform helps these companies organize an extensive range of activities, such as ticketing, reservations, marketing, and online sales, unified into a point of sale and inventory management platform. The startup’s idea came into CEO and co-founder John Pendergrast’s mind when he was employed as a consultant, building a tour operator ticketing system. After spending a few years developing this system, Pendergrast realized that he could not deliver the product that the company required from a consultancy firm. In 2015, Pendergrast decided to restructure the startup’s platform into something RocketRez’s clients wanted. He built what became the pioneer of RocketRez over 18 months but later found it impossible to sell this new product.
The new platform, focusing intensely on cloud systems, entered the market in early 2016. The startup claims it witnessed growth during the COVID-19 pandemic period because it works with more extensive, less-affected business clients. The CEO noted that in 2020, RocketRez increased its annual recurring revenue growth year-over-year by two folds. The startup also claims to have grown its client base by 75 per cent year-over-year in 2020. RocketRez also released new features to clients during the pandemic, such as a COVID-19 screening questionnaire, liability waivers, contactless payments and check-in, and socially distanced assigned seating for passenger’s vessels. Currently, it operates in North America and would be launching its first client in Paris, France. Despite the existing impact of lockdown restrictions on tourism globally, Pendergrast said the startup is slated for international expansion somewhere around 2022.
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