Ibibo

Ibibo Group is an online Indian travel organisation founded in January 2007 by Ashish Kashyap. The company is a subsidiary of MakeMyTrip (MMT) Limited, which owns a 100% stake in Ibibo Group.

Ibibo Group

Type	Private
Industry	Online Travel
Founded	2007; 16 years ago (2007)
Founder	Ashish Kashyap
Headquarters	Gurugram, Haryana , India
Key people	Parikshit Choudhry (CBO) Sunil Suresh (CMO) Vikalp Sahni (CTO) Yuvaraj Srivastava (CHRO) Pankaj Jain (CFO)
Products	Flight,holiday, bus and train bookings
Parent	MakeMyTrip (2016–present) Naspers till 2016
Website	goibibo.com

The group owns the B2C online travel aggregator Goibibo, and online bus ticketing platform RedBus.in.

On 31 January 2017, MakeMyTrip (MMT) made a strategic combination with the ibibo Group by way of an acquisition of 100% equity interest in the ibibo Group from MIH Internet, an indirect subsidiary of Naspers, pursuant to a Transaction Agreement dated 18 October 2016.

History

Ibibo started as a social networking service in 2007,^[1] and later changed to become an e-commerce and travel organisation. In 2009 Goibibo.com was launched.^{[citation needed]}

Acquisition and investments

Bixee

Bixee is a former job search engine for India, and an example of both vertical search and metasearch (not to be confused with Bixby, Samsung's voice assistant). It was launched in late 2005. The company also launched Pixrat, which is a social photo bookmarking service. Bixee was acquired by ibibo, the Indian arm of the South African media giant Naspers, in December 2006.^[2]

Goibibo

Goibibo was launched in 2009 and is part of ibibo Group. It was co-founded by Sanjay Bhasin and Vikalp Sahni.^[3] Goibibo is India's largest hotels aggregation and also one of the leading air aggregator.

PayU India

In 2011, Ibibo rolled out its payment gateway innovation called PayU in the Indian market, to permit websites to integrate e-commerce transactions through online payments.^[4] With PayU, a business can process payment by using credit cards and debit cards (for more than 50 banks), and online banking for banks including ICICI, HDFC, SBI, and Axis Bank. PayU provides an API for integration and transaction analytics to improve the speed and security of payment processing. PayU India launched of a first-of-its kind premium deferral payment facility for consumers 'LazyPay' aimed at those who transact digitally for any amount between ₹500 and ₹2,500 and is an option to pay later.^[5]

redbus.in

Redbus.in became a part of ibibo group via a 100% acquisition in June 2013.^[6][7] redBus is India's most popular online bus ticketing platform, both on mobile and on desktop. The business also owns BOGDS, a cloud computing service for bus operators, and SeatSeller, a GDS for bus inventory distribution.

redBus has recently^[when?] started its carpooling and bike pooling platform called rPool in Delhi.

YourBus

In March 2014, ibibo Group acquired Bangalore-based bus tracking startup YourBus.^[8] YourBus, founded by BITS-Pilani graduates from Rajesh Mallipeddi and Satya Padmanabham in 2011,^[9] is a GPS-based bus tracking and analytics platform. The YourBus application on a smartphone shows users the location of a bus in real time on a map. It also tells the users about the arrival time at their pick-up point along with SMS updates.^[10]

Djubo

In August 2015 ibibo Group bought a minority stake in cloud-based hotel services startup Djubo for an undisclosed amount.^[11] Djubo, founded in February 2015 by Tarun Gulati and Sankalp Goel, manages hotel bookings for over 100 hotels through a single interface.

redbus.pe and redbus.co

In July 2016 Redbus acquired Peru-based bus tracking startup Busportal. In 2017, they founded a chapter of Redbus in Colombia.

The company received ₹10.7 Crores infusion of funding from its Singapore-based parent company, Ibibo Group Holdings. Prior to this, in November 2019, It had also received ₹71.73 Crores.^[12]

MakeMyTrip & Goibibo Group Merger

In October 2016, India based online travel company MakeMyTrip, a Nasdaq listed firm and ibibo Group,^[13] India's largest travel group agreed to merge in a stock transaction, to form the country's biggest online travel company^[14][15] Both these online platforms have Artificial Intelligence AI-powered chatbots named Myra and Gia respectively.^[16]

References

1. "Ibibo.com Launched New Ad Commercial". Business Wire India. 8 January 2008. from the original on 14 July 2014. Retrieved 24 June 2014.
2. "MIH India Acquires Bixee.com And Pixrat; Founders To Join MIH". 5 December 2006. from the original on 30 October 2018. Retrieved 30 October 2018.
3. "Management Team - Goibibo". www.goibibo.com. from the original on 7 January 2018. Retrieved 12 January 2018.
4. "Naspers Launches Payment Gateway PayU In India". MediaNama. 7 October 2011. from the original on 21 October 2014. Retrieved 26 June 2014.
5. "PayU – Payment Gateway for Indian market". iamWire. 7 October 2011. from the original on 21 October 2014. Retrieved 26 June 2014.
6. "redBus sold to Ibibo in one of the biggest overseas internet deals". The Times Of India. 21 June 2013. from the original on 5 July 2015. Retrieved 10 September 2015.
7. . Telegraph India. 21 June 2013. Archived from the original on 17 February 2015. Retrieved 24 June 2014.
8. "ibibo buys Bangalore-based bus tracking startup YourBus". The Times of India. 21 March 2014. from the original on 11 October 2014. Retrieved 3 July 2014.
9. "YourBus integration with RedBus prompted acquisition". LiveMint. 21 March 2014. from the original on 26 June 2014. Retrieved 3 July 2014.
10. "Naspers-Backed ibiboGroup Acquires Online Bus Tracking And Analytics Startup YourBus In India". TechCrunch. 19 March 2014. from the original on 26 October 2017. Retrieved 25 June 2017.
11. "Ibibo Group buys minority stake in cloud-based hotel services Djubo". The Economic Times. 28 August 2015. from the original on 6 September 2015. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
12. "ibibo Gets Fresh Infusion From Singapore-Based Parent Amid CCI Probe". Inc42 Media. 29 February 2020.
13. "Ibibo". from the original on 9 November 2011. Retrieved 8 April 2010.
14. "Online travel portals MakeMyTrip and ibibo announce merger". The Economic Times. 20 October 2016. from the original on 9 December 2016. Retrieved 7 December 2016.
15. "MakeMyTrip, ibibo to merge, to become a dominant player". The Times of India. 19 October 2016. from the original on 30 November 2016. Retrieved 7 December 2016.
16. "MakeMyTrip deploys AI to make bookings easier".

External links

• Official website  
• Ibibo – overview on startuptalky.com