Watch RCR’s WorldMate interview here
It seems that after a decade of traveling, itinerary management app maker WorldMate may finally be arriving at a rather lucrative destination in the shape of a buyout by either Travelport or American Express.
Founded in 2000 as a Palm ISV, WorldMate, with offices both in LA and in central Israel boasts over five million business users of its personal travel assistant app which takes care of everything from itinerary management, flight alerts, hotel booking, local search and more across four major platforms: BlackBerry, iPhone, Nokia and Windows Mobile, with an Android version coming soon.
WorldMate, which changed its name from Mobimate a while back, automatically builds users’ itineraries using confirmation emails and the user’s own calendar, synchronizing it to their Smartphone for immediate access. All users have to do is forward confirmation emails to trips@worldmate.com and WorldMate does the rest for them.
Organizing the disorganized business traveler isn’t all WorldMate does, however. The firm also allows users to search for flights and hotels as well as getting flight delay alerts pushed directly to their phone. Users can also book restaurants, find shopping centers, click-through to maps, get weather forecasts, convert currency rates and more directly from the smartphone app.
When we talked to WorldMate a few weeks ago, the company had just announced partnership deals with the biggest corporate travel providers in the world; Amex, Carlson Wagonlit and TravelPort, giving WorldMate a total addressable market of over 50% of global managed business travelers. Now, however, rumour is the partnership may go a lot deeper than we thought, with acquisition whisperings abounding.
Israel’s Calcalist financial newspaper even posits such a deal could be worth between 50 and 60 million dollars, not bad for a company which made just three million dollars between 2007 and 2008 and around six million a year now thanks to the smartphone boom.
Meanwhile, WorldMate’s founder, Nadav Gur vehemently denied there was any truth to the rumours, stating “The piece in Calcalist was total BS. The facts are not right, and stating them hurts our relationship with strategic partners. In fact, we think the source for that piece was trying to do exactly that.”
In the past, WorldMate has managed to raise some $15 million from investors including RIM and Motorola’s investment arms.
The WorldMate app is consistently ranked as a top app in the iTunes Appstore, BlackBerry Appworld and Nokia Ovistore.
Worldmate did not respond  to the acquisition rumors, but you can watch the video interview conducted with RCR just recently as well as a product demo below.
Interview
Demo:
WorldMate journeys towards acquisition
ABOUT AUTHOR
