Yatra acquires PL Worldways

In a move to fortify its presence in southern India, Nasdaq-listed Yatra online, Inc. has bought the corporate travel business of Chennai-based offline travel services provider PL Worldways Ltd.

This acquisition will help strengthen Yatra's foothold in the southern India region along with adding more than 100 corporate clients to its existing client base of over 700. The company’s local connect and customer service expertise will complement Yatra’s technology platform and leverage the largest hotel network in the country. This will help clients optimize their travel spend and improve their travel processes.

PL Worldways was formed in 1985 as is a fully owned subsidiary of Peirce Leslie & Co, UK, even though the group’s history dates back to the pre-Independence era of India. Currently, PL Worldways has 11 offices across India with over 200 employees.

In July 2016, Yatra had signed a reverse-merger agreement with US-based special purpose acquisition company Terrapin 3 Acquisition Corp, which was listed on the Nasdaq, paving the way for a back-door listing of the second Indian online travel services provider in the US after MakeMyTrip.

EarlySalary buys CashCare

Pune based online lender EarlySalary has acquired Mumbai headquartered startup CashCare, which gives consumer loans through non-banking financial companies, for an undisclosed amount.

CashCare analyses a user’s shopping and wallet data to instantly convert online purchases into EMI-based loans without credit card. This is known as checkout finance. The company has partnered 30 companies whose products the user can purchase, such as MakeMyTrip, ShopClues, Byju’s and HP. For financing the loans, it has partnered non-banking financial companies.

Owned and operated by Social Worth Technologies Pvt. Ltd, EarlySalary was founded in 2015. The three-year-old startup offers a mobile app that allows salaried individuals to avail instant loans for an average tenure of 30 days or till the next salary cycle. Users can avail these loans in the form of salary advances or credit card cash withdrawals. The mobile app is available on both Google Play Store and Apple App Store.

The company claims to be doing about 25,000 loans a month, disbursing about Rs 60 crore monthly. In its most recent fundraising, the Pune-based company raised Rs 100 crore ($15.7 million) in a Series B round led by Eight Roads Ventures India in January. Existing investors IDG Ventures India, Dewan Housing Finance Corp. Ltd. (DHFL) and Ashok Agarwal, director of forex and money transfer services firm Transcorp International Limited, also participated in the round.

1mg acquires Dawailelo

Gurugram based digital healthcare platform 1mg has acquired Varanasi based Dawailelo.com. Post-acquisition, the team will be working with the 1mg ePharmacy team. The acquisition will help the 1mg team to expand the company’s footprint across most parts of India.

This acquisition comes on the heels of 1mg’s recent $15 Mn Series C funding. The new funds were fuelled in by HBM Healthcare Investments along with existing investors Sequoia India, Maverick Capital Ventures, Omidyar Network and Kae Capital. 1mg has been on an acquisition spree since last year. In April 2016, 1mg had raised $6 Mn from Sequoia Capital, Intel Capital, Omidyar Network and Deep Kalra (co-founder of travel portal MakeMyTrip).

Founded in 2013, Dawailelo is a tech-based facilitator in the healthcare space. It helps individuals buy medicines, consult with doctors and get lab tests done. Dawailelo was co-founded by duo Aditya Agrawal (CEO) and Arpit Sarin. Agrawal has an MBA in marketing from Banaras Hindu University and co-founder Arpit Sarin has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering.

On the other hand 1mg, earlier called HealthkartPlus, was the drug search business of Healthkart, which was rebranded and spun off into a separate entity as 1mg in April 2015. The company operates an online marketplace for medicines apart from facilitating doctor’s appointment and diagnostic test booking. The company claims to have over 10 Mn app downloads.

Yatra acquires Air Travel Bureau

Yatra, the NASDAQ listed online travel Company, has entered into an agreement to acquire Air Travel Bureau Ltd, which it says is India’s largest independent corporate travel services provider, with gross bookings of Rs 1500 crores, and a client base of over 400 large and medium businesses across India.

ATB is a 30 year old company and claims that it can help companies save up to 20% of their corporate travel costs. For ATB, they’ll also get access to Yatra’s aggregation of hotels, which they can offer to their clients. According to ATB’s website, they have their own online booking tool with web-fares; travel policy compliance tools, built-in trip authorization and travel notifications, and a real-time view of travel spend for travel managers, apart from integration with ERP solutions like SAP and Oracle.

The acquisition of ATB essentially helps Yatra strengthen its position in the more reliable corporate travel business vertical, even as it tries to find its own space in a market that the MakeMyTrip - Goibibo combine dominate. In July 2016, Yatra had signed a reverse-merger agreement with US-based special purpose acquisition company Terrapin 3 Acquisition Corp, which was listed on the NASDAQ, paving the way for a back-door listing of the second Indian online travel services provider in the US.

Yatra was founded in 2006 by former Ebookers Group (UK) executives Shringi, Manish Amin and Sabina Chopra. Amin is now chief information officer and Chopra is executive vice president of operations. The company is backed by a string of venture capital, private equity and strategic investors. In October last year, it sold a small stake to Reliance Industries Ltd as part of a deal linked to an existing partnership where Reliance pre-installed the Yatra mobile app in its Lyf-branded 4G handsets.

MakeMyTrip to buy Ibibo Travel Business

Online Travel firm MakeMyTrip Ltd has agreed to buy Ibibo Group’s Travel Business in India for $720 Million in stock, creating one of the largest travel companies in the country. The deal will bring all brands of the Nasper and Tencent backed Ibibo Group such as Goibibo, redBus, Ryde and Rightstay under MakeMyTrip. Together, MakeMyTrip and Ibibo processed 34.1 Million transactions in 2015-16.

The transaction is expected to unlock value for customers, supply partners and shareholders, by combining the complementary strengths of each business. MakeMyTrip brings its strong brand, robust mix of domestic and outbound hotels and packages business and strong position in the air ticketing business. Ibibo Group, via its brand Goibibo and redBus, comes with a strong presence in various fast growing travel segments including hotels, bus bookings and air ticketing. 

The combined entity is valued at $1.8 Billion. Naspers and Tencent jointly held 91% and 9% stake in Ibibo respectively. They will be issued new shares in MakeMyTrip and will become the single largest shareholder in MakeMyTrip, owning a 40% stake and will continue proportionate working capital once the deal is closed.

India is a key market for Naspers. Ibibo and MakeMyTrip have built leading companies through their innovative use of technology to create exceptional experiences for people traveling throughout India and increasingly beyond. Morgan Stanley acted as the financial advisor to MakeMyTrip. Goldman Sachs acted as financial advisor to Ibibo and Naspers while Cravath, Swaine and Moore, Trilegal and BLC Roberts served as legal advisors.

Oyo Rooms may buy Zo Rooms

Budget Hotel site Oyo Rooms (Oravel Stays Pvt. Ltd) has expressed interest in buying smaller rival Zo Rooms, which is scrambling to raise a fresh round of funds in order to avoid being sold. The overture from Oyo Rooms follows the entry of large online travel firms MakeMyTrip, Yatra Online Pvt. Ltd and Goibibo into the budget hotel segment.

Though Zo Rooms, run by Zostel Hospitality Pvt. Ltd is currently in conversations with at least two investors for a fresh funding round, it faces an uphill task as its biggest investor; Tiger Global Management has decided to go slow on writing large cheques for the smaller companies in its portfolio. Zo raised roughly $35 Million from Tiger and Orios Management this year.

Oyo Rooms is the early market leader among budget hotels, having raised $100 Million from Japan Softbank Group and others in August. Budget hotel aggregators were supposed to be the next big thing for investors and entrepreneurs, but as with most other new, unproven business such as food tech, investors and entrepreneurs seem to have overestimated the potential of the business.

Budget hotel launches by online travel agencies has only made investors in hotel startups more cautious. MakeMyTrip, Yatra and Goibibo launched their budget hotel businesses, putting them in direct competition with Oyo and Zo and potentially triggering consolidation among startups. The online travel firms have already delisted Oyo and Zo from their platforms, indicating their ambition to build a budget hotels business independently. 

MakeMyTrip Acquires Mygola

The country’s top online travel agency MakeMyTrip Ltd has acquired assets of Mygola.com for an undisclosed amount and the entire Mygola team has joined MakeMyTrip as part of the deal. The acquisition is done through the NASDAQ listed company innovation fund, which was formed to invest in startup or early stage companies in travel technology space.

Mygola, founded by IIT Batch mates Bapna and Prateek Sharma in 2009, claims it can help travellers create custom trips in 15 minutes. Its app, which is present in 16 cities across the world, has up to 5,000 installs on the Google Play store on Android. Mygola mobile app uses technology to curate content, videos, open/close hours, tips from travellers, panoramic views all on a massive scale and specific to individual user taste. The acquisition could potentially give MakeMyTrip a greater foothold in the mobile space.

Since users book everything from attractions to restaurants and cabs from within the app, the company makes money through a commission every time a transaction happens. For restaurant booking it charges $1 per diner and between 5 and 10 percent from cabs etc. It also charges 5 percent from end users as convenience fee. In the original model, Mygola used to generate revenues from users asking questions besides earning a commission for bookings.

The acquisition comes at a time when the Indian travel sector is heating up, having received $71 Million in funding so far in 2015, mostly in early stage and seed funding, as opposed to $55 Million in all of 2014. Helion Venture partners, who led the $1.5 Million round in 2013 for Mygola in October, were also an investor in MakeMyTrip. Prior to that, Mygola had raised $1 Million from the US based accelerator 500 startups, Blumberg capital.