Travel search firm ixigo acquires cab-aggregator firm Rutogo

Travel search firm ixigo on Thursday said that it has completed the acquisition of Square Hoot Hikes, the parent company of inter-city cabs aggregator Rutogo for an undisclosed amount.

As part of the deal, the Rutogo team will be joining ixigo to scale its fast-growing cabs app by building a marketplace for inter-city taxi owners and vendors.

"Rutogo's team is passionate about the tourist taxis segment and they had made considerable progress in building a marketplace with nearly 100 taxi vendors across India within a few months of operation," said ixigo co-founder and CEO Aloke Bajpai.

"This acquisition fits well with our overall strategy of providing comprehensive choice across intra-city and inter-city taxi booking options. We will be launching outstation taxis in the coming weeks, and will also be opening up the cabs marketplace and partner with other booking apps in the inter-city taxis space shortly," he added.

This is the second acquisition in the last one month for ixigo, which earlier announced that it had acquired travel guide firm The Indian Backpacker. Also, hanset-maker Micromax recently invested in ixigo to bundle travel services natively into their new range of Android phones.

Rutogo co-founder Aneesh Rayancha said: "ixigo shares our vision of becoming the leading marketplace for local and outstation cabs. We are quite enthusiastic about joining forces with the most innovative mobile business in the travel & transportation category."

"The market potential for app-based taxi booking is estimated to be worth $9 billion, and inter-city cab bookings will form a majority of that, given the higher value of such transactions," added co-founder Venus Dhuria.