SiteMinder becomes the newest unicorn tech startup in Australia

SiteMinder has become the newest unicorn tech company in Australia, securing over $100 million in funding from investors like BlackRock, Ellerston Capital, Pendal Group and AustralianSuper.

The business provides the core technology that has allowed websites such as Agoda and Booking.com to boom, connecting hotels' back-end systems to those of the booking websites so all systems can be updated simultaneously, regardless of whether a booking is made via the hotel or a third-party site.

The capital raise comes on the back of SiteMinder cracking the lauded $100 million in revenue run rate milestone in May last year. The latest capital raising values the company at $1.1 billion.

The business would not reveal the precise amount it had raised, but speaking to The Australian Financial Review, Chief Executive Sankar Narayan said it had set out in mid October with the target of raising $100 million and that had been comfortably exceeded.

"We had such strong demand from investors of the highest quality that we increased the size of the round.

"Looking at hotel tech around the world, it's actually still quite limited in terms of connectivity. Less than 50 per cent of all accommodation sales are done online.

"There's a huge global market opportunity for us and we're the clear market leader around the world. We want to keep building out the tech platform and push into new markets across various segments and deepen our relationship with customers through new products as well."

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