How a Toronto travel startup grew during the pandemic - and raised US$85-million

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Within four months after the pandemic first hit, SnapCommerce, previously known as Snaptravel, was generating record monthly revenues. That success caught the eye of investors

Hussein Fazal initially panicked when the pandemic hit last year, as business for his online travel agency startup Snapcommerce Technologies Inc. fell by 80 per cent. “I honestly expected we would find some way out of this,” the serial entrepreneur says. “The question was how long it would take.”

“At the beginning of the pandemic, we thought, this is probably not the right time to invest in a business like this,” said Sherif Guirgis, a partner with Lion Capital, which has backed consumer brands American Apparel, Jimmy Choo and Canada’s La Senza and Spence Diamonds. “But when we dug in … it became clear to us these guys are on to something deeper than a travel business.”

Snapcommerce already had buzz before its mettle-testing 2020. Mr. Fazal’s previous startup, AdParlor, which ran advertising campaigns on Facebook for brands such as Starbucks, reached US$100-million in revenue before he sold it in 2011. Co-founder and chief technology officer Henri Shi was on the team at Google that launched YouTube Music Insights. The pair raised more than US$20-million in their first two years from Canadian and U.S.

Source: Holiday News (holidaynews.net)

 

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hussein_fazal Why are you people doing this to us? You left us stranded in the middle of the night in the cold rain hungry after booking us a hotel that closed. We paid 8 months in advance. Bad people, bad business.

hussein_fazal hussein_fazel snaptravel I booked with you and the hotel never got my reservation! I have been talking to your robots for days with no solutions! The hotel says that they don't know who you are you are a scam!!!!

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