José Luis Vilar and Iñaki Uriz are two friends who were clear that their future as entrepreneurs was flying by plane, but they erred in the direction of their first destination. Initially, in 2010, they founded Change Your Flight, an online platform for partial refunds for flight cancellations. “The startup was not successful, but it was a lesson that in 2015 led us to create Caravelo,” explains Iñaki Uriz.
Without leaving the plane, with Caravelo the entrepreneurs expanded their services and also began to offer a service to be able to bid for seats in a higher category and another that allowed travelers to make an offer for a seat adjacent to theirs. But the covid pandemic arrived and businessmen saw that their final destination was to make subscription travel a trend.
Origin
Vilar and Uriz were inspired by Christopher Columbus’s caravels for the name and logo of the startup
Currently, Caravelo focuses its activity on making it easier for large companies in the sector to offer subscription trips to their customers. “It’s a flat rate for travel that allows companies to get more out of their assets, while travelers get better offers,” says Uriz. The startup’s clients include Latam, Volaris, Xizz and AirAsia.
To reach this final destination, the entrepreneurial friends received an economic injection of three million euros from Banco Sabadell through Sabadell Venture Capital and Inveready Venture Finance. Currently, the partners are immersed in another round of financing with the aim of “going beyond our current services”, in the words of Uriz.
With headquarters in Barcelona and a team of 45 employees, Caravelo has been selected to participate in the fourth edition of the Scaleup Spain Network business acceleration program, an initiative of the Bankinter Innovation Foundation, Endeavor and Wayra. Entrepreneurs expect to end the year doubling their turnover, up to five million euros.
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