Thomas Cook India Group enters the travel tech space, announces strategic investment to acquire 24% stake in Ithaka

The board of Thomas Cook India has approved the acquisition of a 24 per cent strategic stake in TravelJunkie Solutions, a Mumbai-based travel tech start-up via its wholly owned subsidiary TC Tours.

TravelJunkie Solutions developed Ithaka – a chat-based mobile application serving FIT (Free Individual Travellers) customers by recommending authentic local experiences for different destinations and helping plan their trip and book activities, hotels and flights.

Ithaka’s unique app based service offers users a potent combination of cutting edge automation via AI/ML based technology and the farmed collective expertise of a community of well-travelled individuals. Ithaka currently serves travellers across various international destinations and plans to expand rapidly over the next 18 – 24 months with the support of Thomas Cook India.

Speaking on the occasion, Madhavan Menon, chairman,Thomas Cook India Group said, “We are very excited with this strategic investment that also marks our first investment in the exciting travel tech space. Ithaka is a perfect marriage of cutting edge technology and human expertise delivered in a user-friendly mobile chat format. For Thomas Cook, the partnership with Ithaka creates a new channel that reaches and serves millennials, while for Ithaka, the partnership delivers an end to end, bookable experience. The business model also resonates perfectly with the hybrid technology + personalisation approach of the Thomas Cook Group in our constant endeavour to innovate and deliver a seamless customer experience to new age travellers”