Online travel marketplace ixigo has today announced that it has raised $15 million in its Series B round of funding. The round was led by Sequoia Capial, along with the participation of Chinese investment firm Fosun Kinzon Capital Pte Ltd.
It is not yet known if existing investors of the company, including SAIF Partners and Make My Trip and Micromax have poured in money in this round. The deal is a mix of compulsorily convertible preference shares and equity shares which was signed in January this year and closed last Friday, reports DealStreetAsia.
As per the reports, Chinese conglomerate Fosun International had been scouting to make private equity investments in India for a while. Thus, this deal makes it the first investment by Fosun in India market in tech space.
Ixigo was founded in 2007 by Rajnish Kumar and Aloke Bajpai. It claims to have 6 million users every month with over 4 million downloads across apps. The company works as a price comparison platform aggregating deals from various online and offline travel portals. The platform also aggregates and compares real-time travel information, prices and availability for flights, trains, buses, cabs, hotels, packages and destinations.
In 2015, the company acquired two startups — Indianbackpackers.com and inter-city cab aggregator Rutogo. Early this year, ixigo acquired the team of mobile content-sharing application Reach for an undisclosed amount.
SAIF Partners and Make My Trip picked up a total 76.6 per cent in ixigo for $18.5 million in 2011, valuing the company at about $25 million. SAIF bought 56.7 per cent while MakeMyTrip picked up 19.9 per cent in that round. In June 2015, Indian smartphone manufacturer Micromax also picked up a stake in the company by investing about $4 million.
Earlier, the company’s CEO and co-founder Alok Bajpai had told that they were aiming to turn profitable in the year 2017-18. He also said that ixigo’s net revenue tripled to Rs 12 crore in 2015-16 from Rs 3.68 crore in the previous fiscal year.
Indian travel space has seen a lot of investments in recent times. Last month, travel company TravelTriangle raised $10 million in a series B round of funding led by RB Investments, a Singapore-based venture capital firm. Currently, the online travel segment is dominated by the likes of MakeMyTrip, Cleartrip and Yatra
