Naspers invests $250 mn in Ibibo

Online travel portal aims to solve problems for transportation and accommodation providers and to connect them to travellers

Online travel firm Ibibo Group said its parent, South African Internet and media company Naspers, would invest $250 million (Rs 1,650 crore) in the company to expand its presence in the hotel segment, focus on innovations and have more users download its app on their smartphones.

Ibibo, whose early investor is Chinese Internet firm Tencent, claims market leadership in bus booking through Redbus and hotel bookings, while being second in airline ticketing to rival MakeMyTrip. Naspers holds the majority stake in both Tencent and Ibibo

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.

Last month, Ctrip picked up a stake in India’s largest travel portal MakeMyTrip for $180 million (around Rs 1,200 crore), 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,” said Ibibo Group founder and chief executive officer Ashish Kashyap.

Ibibo processed about 6.5 million transactions for October-December 2015,  claiming to be the largest online travel company in India, generating at least 2.5 times the transaction volumes of its nearest competitor.

Goibibo hotel bookings surpassed 1.6 million rooms nights during the third quarter, up 400 per cent year on year, making it the largest hotel booking platform in India, the company said.

“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 said.

Naspers, an investor in Flipkart, the country's largest e-commerce site, is betting on users downloading apps to shop online. For Ibibo, mobiles contributed to 71 per cent of the bookings in December, up from 42 per cent a year ago.