Ibibo Group to acquire online bus ticketing firm redBus.in

Jun 21, 2013

Tags:

tourism

New Delhi: E-commerce firm Ibibo Group today said it will acquire Bangalore based online bus ticketing firm redBus.in for an undisclosed amount. Ibibo Group and Pilani Soft Labs Pvt Ltd, owner of redBus.in have executed a binding agreement for the acquisition, the company said in a statement.
"This transaction will expand and diversify Ibibo Group's existing travel assets: Goibibo.com (a B2C travel aggregator) and TravelBoutiqueOnline (a B2B travel agency platform)," the statement added. RedBus.in sells more than a million tickets a month and has over 600 full time employees.
Commenting on the development, Ibibo Group CEO Ashish Kashyap said: "This gives us significant combined scale in terms of daily transaction volumes...We see this as an exciting market opportunity. Online penetration of the bus market is only 5.7 per cent compared to 28 per cent for air travel, suggesting headroom for rapid future growth."
He further said India now has a network of good roads, which is increasing further. Number of buses would increase as people are opting for bus travel due to costly air travel and and long wait-listed railway tickets, said Kashyap.
Pilani Soft Labs was founded in 2006 by 3 BITS-Pilani graduates, Phanindra Sama, Charan Padmaraju and S Pasupunuri, who own three products-redBus, BOSS and SeatSeller serving the fragmented bus industry in India.
All travel entities of Ibibo Group, including redBus.in will continue to run independently and operate as separate businesses to drive deep focus, it said, adding, the founders and management teams of redBus.in would continue in their respective positions in the company.
Ibibo Group is owned by a holding company MIH Ltd, which is jointly owned by South Africa's media house Naspers and China's internet firm Tencen.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/237759" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-f170bab6253cb724d8f15db8b68ce9d1" value="form-f170bab6253cb724d8f15db8b68ce9d1" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="86455608" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>