ibiboGroup (MIH India) has executed an agreement to acquire India’s leading online bus ticketing business, redBus.in (Pilani Soft Labs Pvt. Ltd.) The transaction will expand and diversify ibiboGroup’s existing travel assets – Goibibo.com, one of the leading B2C online travel aggregators, and TravelBoutiqueOnline, a B2B online travel platform.
The combined volumes of redBus.in and ibiboGroup’s existing travel assets make the group one of the biggest online travel players in India.
All the travel entities of ibiboGroup (MIH India), including redBus.in, will continue to run independently and operate as separate businesses. The founders and management teams of each of these entities will continue to build up their businesses.
redBus.in, founded by Phanindra Sama, Charan Padmaraju and Sudhakar Pasupunuri in 2006, is India’s No.1 online bus ticketing platform by all metrics: sales, transaction volumes and available inventory. redBus aggregates bus inventory from thousands of bus operators and makes it available real time to end consumers and agents across the country via its e-commerce portal www.redBus.in.
redBus, offering 228,000 seats per day, sells more than a million tickets a month. It has over 600 full-time employees. The core business model of redBus is commission revenues on successful transactions.
Speaking on the new acquisition, Phanindra Sama, co-founder & CEO of redBus.in, observed: “We are excited to be a part of ibiboGroup. Naspers’ strong belief in internet industry and operating experience in multiple countries will help redBus grow into a renowned brand in the coming years.”
Said Ashish Kashyap, CEO of ibiboGroup: “Our key motivations to acquire redBus are strong management and founding team that will continue to run redBus as an independent operation, and significant leadership and market share of redBus in the online bus ticketing space. This marriage helps us become an even stronger online travel player in India. This gives us significant combined scale in terms of daily transaction volumes and GMV. Lastly, we see this as an exciting market opportunity. Online penetration of the bus market is only 5.7% compared to 28% for air travel, suggesting headroom for rapid future growth”.