Ibibo gets $250 million investment from Naspers

Online travel venture Ibibo Group, which is backed by global internet and media company Naspers and China's leading internet firm Tencent, has secured a $250 million investment from global internet and media company Naspers.

Ibibo Group will use the investments to strengthen its position in the Indian hotels category and technology innovations.

''Our objective is to solve problems for the transportation and accommodation providers and to connect them to the travellers. The commitment from both Naspers and Tencent to ibibo is testimony to the strength of our platforms and the opportunities ahead,'' Ibibo group founder and CEO, Ashish Kashyap said.

The company, which is the largest online travel company in India, processed more than 6.5 million transactions between October and December 2015 (Q3).

The group owns integrated online travel properties such as hotels booking engine Goibibo.com and bus-ticketing aggregator redBus.in.

''The Indian e-commerce market, and the online travel segment in particular, offers exciting growth prospects for us as a group.

With a talented, proven management team and exceptional technology, ibibo is well positioned to benefit from an increasing number of people using online travel services going forward,'' Naspers Group CEO, Bob van Dijk said.

In a recent survey, Goibibo was rated number one by hoteliers across a number of parameters, including booking volumes, confirmed bookings, last minute bookings, backend and IT support, as well as Insights and market intelligence.

Goibibo hotel bookings surpassed 1.6 million room nights in Q3, a 400 per cent year-on-year growth, making it the largest hotels booking platform in India. Mobile contributed to 71 per cent of the bookings in the month of December 2015, up from 42 per cent a year ago.