If you’ve ever tried to book a venue for a company event, you’ll know how onerous a task it can be. You have to contact multiple vendors, wait for quotes, evaluate them, see if you can get a good deal, and then get all that approved. So it makes sense that depending on the size of the group, companies may take the shortcut to Airbnb or Booking.com, or work with an agency.
French startup Naboo is trying to bring more visibility into this fragmented market with an Airbnb-esque marketplace for corporate retreats that, in addition to accommodation, bundles in other services like catering, activities and transport.
The company also offers a SaaS component that serves as a platform for all MICE events (short for Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions, these are large-scale gatherings of people). The platform essentially lets its big corporate clients define their procurement policies, create approbation workflows, manage invoices and payments, and more.
Having an all-in-one marketplace likely helps the company sell its platform to big corporate clients. Publicly traded companies are constantly looking for platforms that centralize all spendings around a specific category so they can set budgets and see if they’re overspending.
The strategy seems to be working: Naboo says its booking volumes quadrupled to €60 million in 2024 from €15 million a year earlier. Now, this is a marketplace, so most of that booking value is being captured by its accommodation and catering partners, but the company told TechCrunch it has an average take-rate of 17% — it takes a 10%-12% cut from providers and another 5%-6% from clients. Naboo generated revenue of around €10 million in 2024.
The company said 10% of French public companies listed on the CAC40 index have used its platform, and it has 10 contracts that generate more than €1 million in booking volume per year. Some of its clients include Google, Société Générale, Veolia, Arkema, Thales and Qonto.
The startup recently raised a €20 million (around $21 million) Series A round led by Notion Capital. Notably, the Series A round comes just 11 months after its seed round.
With the new money, the startup wants to automate some of the manual tasks that are currently handled by its project managers. It has 140 people on its roster, including 20 freelancers.
The company also intends to expand to other countries, starting with the U.K., where the product is already live. The country already represents 10% of Naboo’s revenue, and apparently things are going well.
