Online travel company Ibibo Group has raised $250 million from South African media conglomerate Naspers and Chinese internet company Tencent (in which Naspers has a minority investment), to cement its position in the hotels category and further its technology. An ET report states that Naspers now owns 90% of the travel company post the investment, while a Mint report states that it holds about 80%.
Ibibo has investments or stakes in Goibibo, redBus, travelboutiqueonline and PayU Global and was founded by Ashish Kashyap in 2007. The company said that it processed over 6.5 million transactions in Q3 (Oct-Dec 2015), whereas Goibibo, its online travel site, crossed 1.6 million room nights in Q3. It acquired a minority stake in hotel tech startup Djubo in August last year.
Goibibo developments:
– For the quarter ended December 31 (Q3FY16) Goibibo claimed that 71% of its hotel bookings came via mobile, up from 57% two quarters ago. Desktop accounted for the rest 29% of the bookings. Overall the platform saw over bookings for 1.6 million room nights for the quarter.
– In September last year, it launched a new section on its website and mobile app called GoStays which would aggregate unbranded budget accommodations across India.
– In December, Goibibo claimed that it had reached 600,000 ratings and reviews across 20,000 Indian hotels by its users. It expects to expand ratings and reviews to 37,000 hotels by March 2016, and a total volume of 1 million ratings.
redBus launches in Singapore and Malaysia: In July, online bus ticketing site redBus launched in Singapore and Malaysia to let users book bus tickets between Singapore and Malaysia, as well as cities within Malaysia, either through the domain redBus.sg or the native Android/iOS app. In June 2014, Naspers said that it acquired 100% stake in redBus for around $101 million.
Competition:
– Last month, online travel agency MakeMyTrip raised $180 million in convertible bonds from China’s Ctrip. In November 2015, MakeMyTrip launched Value+, a brand of budget hotel rooms, on its website. For online travel agent MakeMyTrip, in Q4-FY15, mobile users accounted for more than 40% of total online traffic and 22% of online transactions for the company in India.
– Earlier this month, branded budget hotel rooms aggregator OYO Rooms bought out its rival Zo Rooms after talks of acquisition since December 2015. In August 2015, OYO Rooms raised $100 million in a funding round led by SoftBank group and participation from existing investors
– In December, we reported that nearly 60% of Cleartrip’s traffic in and 46% of all transactions on the platform came from mobile during Q2 2015. 48% of the visitors to Cleartrip were using the Android app, 15% used the iOS app while 4% used the Windows app. The rest of the 33% traffic came from mobile browsers.
Also read:
– Oyo & Zo Rooms delisted from MakeMyTrip, Yatra, Goibibo
– Cleartrip’s former head of hotels launches budget accommodation Comfy Stays
Our OTA coverage.
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