Travel search engine Skyscanner has raised $192 million from Khazanah Nasional Berhad, the Malaysian government’s investment fund and Yahoo! Japan among other investors, reports TechCrunch. The search engine will use the funds for expand to other markets around the world and for acquisitions. Skyscanner lets users search for flights, hotels and car hires in over 20 countries. In India, the platform also lets users book buses in partnership with redBus. The company searches various other aggregators to help users find the cheapest deals. For flight tickets in India, Skyscanner claims to compare rates between Cleartrip, Makemytrip, Goibibo, Yatra, various airline websites and others, while for hotels it relies on data from Hotels.com, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, Expedia, Booking.com and others. TripHobo partnership: In June last year, itinerary planning portal TripHobo (formerly JoGuru) partnered with Skyscanner to allow users to compare prices of hotels, flights and car rentals. Under the deal, TripHobo would use Skyscanner’s business APIs to provide real-time information about pricing of hotels, flights and taxis. Developments in travel services: - In November 2015, travel search marketplace Ixigo launched a meta search called Super Value Hotels for curated budget hotels on its platform. It aggregates and compares deals across branded budget hotel aggregators like Oyo Rooms, Zo Rooms, Wudstay, Vista Rooms along with independent hotels. - The same month, online travel agencies (OTAs) like MakeMyTrip and Yatra decided to delist budget hotel aggregators Oyo and Zo Rooms from its platforms. MakeMyTrip then went on to launch its own budget…
