Online Travel Industry in India – the story so far

The online travel market, as we all know is overcrowded. Here is a quick recap of the existing players, what they do and their funding status:

OTA (online travel agency)	Funding	Investor	Extra plugs
FlightRaja (now called Via)	$5 million	NEA Indo US ventures (owned by Vinod Dham)	Domestic + International flight ticketing, bus ticketing, hotel reservations.
MakeMyTrip	$10 million	SAIF Capital Partners	Domestic flight ticketing, hotel bookings – bundled/packaged service.
Yatra	$5 million	Reliance Capital, Norwest VC, TV18	Domestic flight ticketing, hotel bookings – bundled/packaged service.
TravelGuru	$10 million	Sequoia Capital India (Sequoia Capital and WestBridge Capital Partners)	Domestic ticketing, hotels, cruises, holiday packages, corporate travel
Cleartrip	$3 million	KPCB, Sherpalo	Domestic booking, hotels, place information
Arzoo		Sabeer Bhatiya’s factory!	Domestic + International flight ticketing, Holiday package, car rentals
Rediff Faresearch		Rediff	meta search engine.
Yahoo Farechase		Y!	meta search engine – though not too sure why Y! is not promoting this in India.
Zoomtra		*	meta search engine.
Ghumo		*	meta search engine (for flight/train and hotel bookings)
iXiGo		self funded	meta search engine, read our review here.
ezeego1		Cox & Kings	probably the most relevant meta search engine.
Travelocity India	N/A	Sabre Holdings	Initial focus on hotel bookings.
Travel Chacha		*	Domestic + International booking, car rentals, hotel bookings, Packaged deals
TripMela		*	Focuses only on travel related deals
Meratrip		*	Main focus is on travel related deals
Airdeccan.net		AirDeccan	has a tie-up with TravelGuru for hotel bookings.
Indiatimes		Indiatimes	Travel booking for partner sites

‘*’ = lack of information on investors (if you have any info, please let me know).
Few interesting info (via livemint)

Travel portals in India did business of $800 million (of the total $15.5 billion travel market in the country) in 2006. This is expected to increase to $2 billion by 2008.
In 2006, India attracted 4.43 million foreign tourists; the same year, around 350-400 million domestic tourists are estimated to have traveled around the country
Air passengers in the country increased from 22.788 million in 2005 to 32.172 million in 2006.
Flightraja is already profitable and does business of Rs1 crore a day.
On an average, commission from air tickets which account for the bulk of the business are the lowest and range from between 2% and 9%.
For hotel bookings, the commission is much higher and varies between 8% and 25%