Bangalore: ibiboGroup (MIH India), has executed a binding agreement to acquire India’s leading online Bus ticketing business, redBus.in (Pilani Soft Labs Pvt. Ltd) for an undisclosed amount.

This 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 that enables thousands of small and medium agents).

The combined volumes of redBus.in and ibiboGroup’s existing travel assets makes 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 to drive deep focus. The founders and management teams of each of these entities will continue to build out their businesses.

redBus.in, founded by Phanindra Sama in 2006 is India’s number one 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

redBus aggregates 228,000 seats per day, sells more than a million tickets a month and has 600+ full time employees.  The core business model of redBus is commission revenues on successful transactions.

Speaking on this event, Phanindra Sama, Co-Founder & CEO of redBus.in said “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.”

According to 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. Second, significant leadership and market share of redBus in the online bus ticketing space.  Third, this marriage leap frogs us to 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”

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