Travel information from bookings made on Indian travel booking tool Yatra will now automatically flow to Chrome River, the expense and invoice manager announced. Yatra has more than 600 large corporate clients, according to a Chrome River spokesperson.
Yatra, which is publicly traded on NASDAQ, is considered one of the leading travel companies in India. In fiscal year 2017 ending on March 31, net revenue totaled $80 million and gross bookings totaled $1.1 billion, confirmed Yatra VP head of investor relations Manish Hemrajani.
The booking tool offers access to 83,000 hotel properties in 1,200 cities in India and 800,000 properties around the world. "In India, about 90 percent of hotels are mom and pop hotels," Hemrajani said. This month, the company launched YUVA—short for "Yatra universal virtual travel assistant"—which allows travelers to book trips using text or voice. It's available on desktop, Android, iOS, Google Assistant and Facebook messenger.
CEO and co-founder Alan Rich said India is one of the fastest-growing business travel markets with corporate travel spending increasing at 12 percent annually, "which is more than double [the percent growth] of the U.S. and almost five times the growth seen across Europe."