Ibibo Group, the Indian online travel venture backed by global internet and media company Naspers as well as China’s leading internet firm Tencent, today announced that Naspers will be investing another US$250m in the group.
The investment will be focussed on extending ibibo’s leadership position in the Indian hotels category and on additional technology innovations.
Ibibo processed more than 6.5m transactions for the period October to December (Q3) 2015. It claims to be the largest online travel company in India, generating more than 2.5x the transaction volumes of its nearest competitor. The group owns integrated online travel properties such as Goibibo.com (hotels booking engine and also a leading air ticketing aggregator), and redBus.in (No 1 online bus ticketing platform).
Goibibo hotel bookings surpassed 1.6m room nights during Q3, up 400% YOY, making it the largest hotels booking platform in India. Mobile contributed to 71% of the bookings in the month of December 2015, up from 42% a year ago.
Recently, Makemytrip raised $180mn from China’s Ctrip.
