SC

Strategy Canon

Navan: sourced choices

40 product and go-to-market choices, oldest first. Back to the case study

  1. 2015-05-15Product · Initial job TripActions started as a booking product for frequent business travelers, after the founders found corporate booking 'painfully antiquated, requiring hours of frustration to complete simple reservations'. NV6
  2. 2016-01Go_To_Market · First venture round A $14.6 million Series A came from Zeev Ventures and Lightspeed; Oren Zeev had put $50,000 into the founders in 2013 [NV40]. NV3
  3. 2017-10Product · Consumer inventory The booking tool drew inventory from consumer and distribution partners, with partnerships signed with Expedia, Priceline and Sabre by October 2017. NV19
  4. 2017-10Product · Savings rewards Travelers who chose a cheaper option than policy allowed received rewards such as a $100 Amazon gift card. NV19
  5. 2017-10Go_To_Market · Early customers Early customers included Box, OpenGov and Bowers & Wilkins; travel budget under management grew 18 times year over year. NV19
  6. 2018-03Product · Price to beat Each city carried a hotel 'price to beat'; employees booking below it earned gift cards or vacation credit. NV8
  7. 2018-03Go_To_Market · Booking fee TripActions charged companies $20 per booking and also earned hotel and other supplier commissions. NV8
  8. 2018-07Go_To_Market · Europe Offices in London and Amsterdam opened the European business. NV3
  9. 2018-08-22Product · Agent environment TripActions agents worked in its own software, which merged booking records from Sabre, Expedia, Priceline and Booking.com into one trip, so a change to one leg flagged the parts of the trip it affected. NV57
  10. 2018-08-22Go_To_Market · Fee structure Cohen described a platform fee, a customer success fee and one booking fee that covered as many agent contacts as a traveler needed, with no surcharge for calling an agent. NV57
  11. 2019Product · Airline content After Delta briefly blocked its fares in early 2019, TripActions adopted the airline's Next Generation Storefront display standard. NV9
  12. 2019-06Product · Personalization and speed Machine learning ranked options for each traveler, and the company claimed a six-minute average booking. NV9
  13. 2019-06Go_To_Market · Per-trip fee The company charged $25 per trip and earned secondary commissions from hotel and flight partners; it served 2,000 customers with $1.1 billion of trip budgets. NV9
  14. 2019-06Go_To_Market · Growth capital A $250 million round led by Andreessen Horowitz valued TripActions at $4 billion; Cohen said the aim was to 'accelerate our growth'. NV9
  15. 2019-08Product · Live agents Human travel agents answered 24 hours a day by chat, email and phone, responding on average in under 60 seconds. NV2
  16. 2020-02-25Product · Liquid card TripActions Liquid launched: a Visa card tied to the booking platform that switches on automatically when an employee is on a work trip and reconciles bookings and payments in one place. NV10
  17. 2020-03Go_To_Market · COVID cuts TripActions laid off 296 people, mainly in recruiting, marketing and travel support, while keeping most of R&D. NV43
  18. 2020-04Product · Out-of-system spend During the shutdown the product team built safety and budget tools and used Liquid to track travel spend booked outside the system. NV17
  19. 2020-06Go_To_Market · Pandemic financing Greenoaks and Vista Credit led $125 million of convertible debt; the company held $350 million in cash. NV16
  20. 2021-05-05Go_To_Market · Reed & Mackay TripActions bought Reed & Mackay, a London agency founded in 1962 serving executive travelers in 50+ markets, its first acquisition. NV38
  21. 2022-11-08Go_To_Market · European roll-up Comtravo (Germany), Resia (Sweden) and Atlanta (Spain) followed Reed & Mackay within 18 months. NV39
  22. 2022-12-08Go_To_Market · Card funding TripActions arranged $400 million of credit facilities to fund card accounts; Liquid revenue, from interchange and subscriptions, grew 4.2 times. NV30
  23. 2023-01Go_To_Market · Free startup plan A free startup plan covered up to 50 monthly active users; the Travel Only plan charged $25 to reach a live agent. NV29
  24. 2023-02Product · Rebrand TripActions renamed itself Navan, and Liquid became Navan Expense. NV3
  25. 2023-04Go_To_Market · India Navan acquired Tripeur, a Bangalore travel and expense platform. NV3
  26. 2023-06-12Product · Navan Connect Navan Connect reconciled expenses in real time on a company's existing Visa or Mastercard corporate cards, so customers could use Navan Expense without switching card issuer. NV58
  27. 2025-01-31Go_To_Market · Revenue mix About 90% of revenue was usage-based (supplier commissions and booking fees, a take rate of about 7% of gross bookings) and about 10% subscription. NV1
  28. 2025-01-31Go_To_Market · Card volume Payment volume on Navan cards reached $3.7 billion in fiscal 2025; 36% of customers used three or more products. NV1
  29. 2025-07Product · Navan Cloud Navan runs its own aggregation layer, Navan Cloud, combining distribution systems, low-cost carriers and direct supplier connections into one real-time inventory. NV49
  30. 2025-07Product · Expense workflow Expense management offered receipt capture, approval workflows, policy enforcement and ERP integrations with NetSuite, SAP and Workday. NV1
  31. 2025-07-31Product · AI support About half of customer interactions in the six months to July 2025 were handled by AI, alongside 24/7 live chat and phone service. NV49
  32. 2025-09-19Go_To_Market · Land in travel, expand The S-1 describes landing a customer in travel and expanding into payments, expense, meetings and other offerings, with net revenue retention above 110% at January 2024 and 2025; expense subscriptions were about 10% of revenue. NV65
  33. 2025-10-30Go_To_Market · IPO Navan listed on Nasdaq at $25, raising $923 million at about $6.7 billion fully diluted, 27% below its 2022 private price. NV44
  34. 2025-11-20Go_To_Market · Commissioned ROI study A Navan-commissioned Forrester study reported 16% travel savings and a customer that consolidated several regional travel agencies onto Navan. NV45
  35. 2025-12-15Go_To_Market · Visa win Visa moved its global travel program to Navan from CWT; Cohen said Visa chose Navan because 'the old model no longer works for global enterprises'. NV56
  36. 2026-07Product · Ava agent The Ava AI agent handled about 60% of customer interactions in the quarter, including rebooking stranded travelers and changing hotels. NV35
  37. 2026-07Go_To_Market · Enterprise push Navan served 50 S&P 500 companies and said enterprise RFPs tripled in the first half of 2026. NV35
  38. 2026-09-08Product · Engine partnership Navan integrated Engine's infrastructure to add group bookings and extended stays to its platform. NV46
  39. 2026-10-01Go_To_Market · Free travel for smaller firms For companies up to 300 employees travel booking is free: 'Navan is powered by travel providers' commission fees'. NV28
  40. 2026-10-01Go_To_Market · Expense pricing Expense is free for five users, then $15 per user per month. NV28