If you have ever tried to book a place for a corporate event, you will know how expensive a task can be. You have to contact more suppliers, wait for the citations, evaluate them, see if you can get a good deal and then get everything that has been approved. So it makes sense that depending on the size of the group, companies can take the connection to Airbnb or Booking.com or work with an agency.
The French startup Naboo is trying to offer greater visibility in this fragmented market with an Airbnb style market for corporate retreats which, in addition to accommodation, bundles in other services such as catering, activities and transport.
The company also offers a Saas component that acts as a platform for all mice events (abbreviation of meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions, these are large -scale meetings). The platform essentially allows its large company customers to define their supply policies, create approval work flows, manage invoices and payments and more.
Having an all-in-one market probably helps the company sell its platform to large business customers. Companies listed on the stock exchange are constantly looking for platforms that centralize all the expenses around a specific category so that they can set budgets and see if they are too dull.
The strategy seems to work: Naboo says that its booking volumes quadrupled at € 60 million in 2024 of 15 million euros a year earlier. Now, this is a market, so most of that booking value is captured by its housing and catering partners, but the company told Techcruncha which has an average rate of 17% -he makes a 10% -12 cut % of suppliers and another 5% -6% from customers. Naboo generated income of around € 10 million in 2024.
The company stated that 10% of the French public companies listed on the CAC40 index used its platform and has 10 contracts that generate more than 1 million euros of booking volume per year. Some of its customers include Google, Société Générale, Veolia, Arkema, Thales and Qonto.
The startup recently collected a round of 20 million euros (about $ 21 million) led by Note Capital. In particular, the Serie A round only comes 11 months after its seed round.
With the new money, the start wants to automate some of the manual activities that are currently managed by its project manager. He has 140 people on his list, including 20 freelancers.
The company also intends to expand to other countries, starting from the United Kingdom, where the product is already live. The country already represents 10% of Naboo’s revenue and apparently things are going well.
