Yapta, a Seattle-based startup launched in January last year has raised $2.3 million in a round A financing. The financial backers included First Round Capital, alongside with Voyager Capital, Swiftsure Capital and Bay Partners, and it brings the company’s total raised funds to a $3 million. Since airfares were regulated in year 1978, as a consequence, most of the U.S. passengers did not use the travel agents to buy airline tickets. Though it opened the rooms for the growth of the online airfare Web sites, but Yapta has successfully differentiate itself by offering a smarter way to buy airline tickets by comparing and tracking airfare prices by “tagging” the exact flight itineraries that the users want using a downloaded browser add-on, the software that Yapta offered. Of course, this will further decreased the booking revenues that supposedly earned by the airline company, but in the other hand, attracted the huge users in using Yapta’s software, i.e. Yapta Tagger.

Yapta, stands for Your Amazing Personal Travel Assistant, one of the great features of the Yapta Tagger was the ‘open systems’ or the unbiased feature of it. If they continued their business model, and never allowed any preference to the flights of any airline company, I believe it will make a strong impact in the U.S. air travel industry.