The problem
Business travel at regional companies ran on emails, offline agencies, and messy expense claims: finance had no control over what employees booked, trips cost more than they should, and nobody could see the full travel budget in one place.
How it works
Tumodo gives companies an online business-travel platform where teams book flights and hotels — even for large numbers of employees — within about two minutes. Inventory is aggregated from more than 400 airlines and over 2 million accommodation options; company travel policies are enforced at booking time; and dashboards track spend, delivering average savings of 35% on travel expenses.
Pain points
Slow manual approvals, agency markups with no transparency, off-policy bookings, scattered invoicing, and no consolidated view of travel spend or traveller whereabouts.
Business model
A B2B travel-management marketplace: Tumodo earns on the corporate bookings flowing through its platform and grows distribution through employer-facing partnerships such as its Tabby integration for travel management.
Challenges
Living up to a $35M pre-seed — an unusually large round for the stage — demands very fast scaling; the stated goal of reaching 25 additional countries by 2026 stretches operations, localisation, and support; and entrenched agencies plus corporate inertia make enterprise switching slow.
Funding
- Raised: $35M pre-seed (Jan 2024), co-led by MENA-focused angel investors, earmarked for UAE presence, product development, and MENA partnerships (StartupScene, Jan 2024).
Latest — June 2024
In June 2024 Tumodo partnered with Saudi fintech Tabby to enhance travel management — integrating its services into Tabby’s travel-management system for planning business trips — a step in its push to digitise business travel across the UAE and GCC with AI-enabled tooling.