Traveloka, one of the largest Southeast Asian travel-booking platforms, now seems ready to enter the final stretch of its race to a public listing. But in 2022, an initial public offering (IPO) is mighty different than it would have been in 2020 or 2021, when market sentiment favoured large, diversified tech platforms.
Instead of bulking up to project ambition and size, the Indonesian company is slimming down.
The travel unicorn has already made announcements to that effect. In September, the company said it was discontinuing its food-delivery and courier services right after it had secured a US$300 million US$300 million Bloomberg BlackRock, Allianz Join $300 Million Traveloka Funding Round Read more financing round. The 10-year-old company has raised a total of US$1.5 billion from various investors since its inception.
Traveloka’s most recent financial statement also shows it offloaded its Indonesia-based financial-services arm, Caturnusa, in 2021.
After a decade as a private company, an almost SPAC SPAC Special Purpose Acquisition Company A shell company without business operations that lists on a stock exchange with the purpose of acquiring and merging with another company that then takes its place. merger that ended up falling falling The Ken The lag in Covid-survivor Traveloka’s US$5 billion SPAC flight Read more apart in 2021, and repeated hints that the company was seeking the traditional route to go public instead, it now has to follow through—despite uncertain macroeconomic conditions.
The company, which hasn’t yet announced an IPO timeline, declined to participate in this story.
For now, the only window into the turbulence the firm weathered during the pandemic and where its next horizons may be, is in the financial statements for the year ended December 2021 that Traveloka filed in late October 2022. The company follows January-December financial year.
But some aspects of Traveloka’s operations remain locked in a black box.
Despite operating primarily in Indonesia and some Southeast Asian countries, its corporate structure ultimately leads to a holding firm based in the Cayman Islands.
While this offers tax advantages to the company, it also limits visibility on the company’s ownership and transactions, such as the recent fundraising.
