Golf course management tool Chronogolf raises $1.5 million
Chronogolf, a Montreal-based cloud-based software solution that organizes and streamlines every aspect of the business side of golf courses, has raised $1.5 million in funding.
The round was led by iNovia Capital, with participation from THCAP, Business Angels QC and BDC Technologies Group. It bumped up the company’s total funding overall to $2.9 million.
“The company is growing fast and we believe they will emerge as a leader in their space,” iNovia’s David Nault said, rather directly, about his firm’s new portfolio company.
Chronogolf was founded in 2012 by Jean-David Saint-Martin and Guillaum Jacquet, two former investors with Teralys Capital, the largest fund-of-funds in Quebec. They were also golf professionals who saw an opportunity to help their industry, leaving Teralys in 2013 to focus on Chronogolf full time.
The software records and manages reservations for golf courses, allowing them to market their services to golfers, both on and off the course, including an intelligent booking engine for tee times.
For many golf courses, still to this day, reservations are still done on Excel,or even by pen and paper. The guys at Chronogolf set out to change that.
“We realized that the golf industry was like the POS systems industry 10 years ago,” Jacquet told Les Affaires’ Julien Brault. “In doing our research, we learned that 40 per cent of golf clubs in North America continued to manage their club with Excel.”
Since launching, Chronogolf has been adopted by more than 200 golf courses in five countries, and now stands at eight employees. As of January 1, 2016, the company said that 220,000 unique golfers have booked over 2.5 million rounds of golf using Chronogolf’s booking engine.
Moreover, Chronogolf said that on average, a golf course using the tool will increase its occupancy by 10.75 per cent after its first year. “This is the metric we are the most proud of,” said Saint-Martin. “It is a testament that we are building something very useful in driving operational efficiencies and revenue without the technical or cost hurdles.”
Brault wrote that Chronogolf is still much smaller than the golf booking giant GolfNow , which allows booking at 6,000 golf courses. Chronogolf, however, is fully online, unlike that of its competitor.
As for the future, it seems that Chronogolf has its eyes on expansion outside of North America. The startup is working with golf courses in France and Morocco, although its main market remains Canada and the United States, according to Les Affaires.
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