South African Internet and media company Naspers is set to invest $250 million (Rs. 1,650 cr) in the Ibibo Group. The investment would be made for the company to be able to expand its presence in the hotel segment. Also, the aim is to focus on innovations and get increasing number of people to download the company’s app.
Ibibo claims that it is a market leader in bus booking through Redbus and hotel bookings, while being second in airline ticketing to rival MakeMyTrip. One of the early investors in Ibibo was Chinese Internet firm Tencent. Naspers, the parent company of Ibibo holds majority stake in both Tencent and Ibibo.
According to a Business Standard report, India’s online travel firms are receiving big investments as Naspers and China’s largest travel site Ctrip.com look at tapping the growing base of consumers who use smartphones to buy bus and air tickets and holidays.
China’s largest travel site Ctrip bought a stake in India’s largest travel portal MakeMyTrip for $180 million (around Rs 1,200 crore) last month, via convertible bonds, with an option to increase the stake to 26 per cent.
“We will use the money for three things. Expand our reach to over 100,000 hotels from 45,000 by 2017. Have more users to download our app from the existing 10 million. And invest in technology,” Ibibo Group founder and chief executive officer Ashish Kashyap told The Business Standard.In October- December 2015, Ibibo processed about 6.5 million transactions. The company claims to be the largest online travel company in India which generates at least 2.5 times the transaction volumes of its nearest competitor.“The Indian e-commerce market, and the online travel segment in particular, offers exciting growth prospects for us as a group. With a talented, proven management team and exceptional technology, ibibo is well positioned to benefit from an increasing number of people using online travel services going forward,” Naspers Group CEO Bob van Dijk told The Business Standard.
