The country’s biggest online travel portal, MakeMyTrip has recently acquired GoIbibo for a $2 billion deal which makes it India’s biggest acquisition in the online travel space.
“Today’s announcement is a significant step forward for the rapidly growing travel industry in India. There are three well established brands, each a leader in their space that we value. These include MakeMyTrip, GoIbibo and RedBus and on the internet it is very important that you keep brands that add value and grow them and we are quite clear we would want to play to the advantage of each of these brands. If you look around the world, you will see keeping established brands have helped.” -Makemytrip Group CEO Deep Kalra said in a statement.
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Here are a few things you should know about this merger:
- This acquisition will bring all brands which belong to the travel space like Redbus, Ryde, Ibibo and Makemytrip under the same umbrella. This is a huge development in the travel space. In a market place where all services are fragmented, a consolidated website offering all services under a single name is more likely to become a hit with the masses.
- This deal will help Makemytrip gain an upper hand over other competitors like Cleartrip, Expedia etc as by adding more variety and number of services; it is in a position to outdo the competition.
- Deep Kalra and Rajesh Magow will continue their roles as Executive Chairman and India CEO of MakeMyTrip whilst Ashish Kashyap, a former employee of Ibibo will be joining the board of directors as the president of this merger.
- The final transaction is scheduled to be done by December after which MakeMyTrip will own 100% shares of Ibibo.
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Image credit: SkyMed