Online travel company Ibibo Group, that owns portals such as Goibibo.com, redBus.in and Travelboutique has acquired 51 per cent stake in online bus tracking and analytics platform YourBus.com for an undisclosed amount.
With this Ibibo is all set to achieve a leadership position in the online travel space that has players such as Makemytrip.com, Yatra.com, Cleartrip, Ixigo and Akbar Travels.
Ibibo, which is owned by South Africa based Naspers, had acquired RedBus for Rs 780 crore last year.
Ashish Kashyap, CEO of ibiboGroup, said: “Our key motivation to acquire YourBus is to enhance passenger experience at redBus.in and Goibibo.com, whilst at the same time providing additional technologies and analytics to the Bus operators so as to increase their efficiencies in the marketplace. ”
IbiboGroup will integrate the YourBus platform with both its existing online travel properties, redBus.in and Goibibo.com. Following this YourBus founders Rajesh Mallipeddi and Satya Padmanabham will work closely with the RedBus team. YourBus is functional in 200 buses and is already integrated with redBus’ mobile and web applications. The acquisition will enable the YourBus team to expand its reach potentially to thousands of buses.
Founded in 2011, Yourbus is a GPS-based tracking platform, which solves problems for both bus travelers and bus operators. Bus travelers can access real time information regarding the location of a bus on their mobiles as well as online. Furthermore, important information such as bus delays and time of departure is pushed to passengers via both SMS and web notifications.
Bus operators are able to track their buses and get detailed analytics on punctuality and efficiency of their buses. They can sort this information by route, bus driver and vehicle number and also get estimated time of arrival reports and other weekly /daily location based reports.