Kashyap: Staying in the lead
INDIA’s leading online travel company Ibibo Group is set to receive US$250 million in funding from South African media conglomerate Naspers, who is already a stakeholder in the group alongside China’s Tencent. With this latest round of investment, Naspers will own a 90 per cent stake in Ibibo.
Ibibo is known for hotel booking engine and air ticketing aggregator Goibibo.com, online bus ticketing platform redBus.in, car sharing app Ryde, among other businesses. Overall, it processed more than 6.5 million transactions in 3Q2015, generating more than 2.5 times the transaction volumes of its closest competitor.
During the same period, Goibibo hotel bookings surpassed 1.6 million room nights, up 400 per cent year-on-year, making it the largest hotels booking platform in India by volume. Mobile contributed to 71 per cent of the bookings in December 2015, up from 42 per cent a year ago.
Ashish Kashyap, founder & CEO, Ibibo Group, said: “Our objective is to solve problems for the transportation and accommodation providers and to connect them to the travellers. The commitment from both Naspers and Tencent to Ibibo is testimony to the strength of our platforms and the opportunities ahead.”
