New Delhi-based ibiboGroup, a subsidiary of South African digital media conglomerate Naspers Group, has acquired bus tracking and analytics platform YourBus.in from Bangalore-based Lucido SoftLabs Pvt Ltd for an undisclosed amount. This comes nine months after the group snapped the country’s top bus ticketing platform redBus.in.
As part of the deal, the YourBus team will join redBus.
“We are very excited to announce that YourBus is acquired by ibiboGroup,†YourBus said in a post on its website.
“With redBus, we want to take live bus tracking to every bus in India and make it a de-facto feature in all buses and to all bus passengers. In spite of our individual efforts, we realised that we needed a bigger support/network like redBus. We couldn’t think of a better home for YourBus,†reads the post.
ibiboGroup will integrate the YourBus platform with its online properties redBus.in and Goibibo.com.
YourBus was founded in 2011 by Satya P Devarakonda and Rajesh Mallipeddi; both hold BE degrees in Computer Science from BITS Pilani. Prior to co-founding YourBus, Devarakonda worked at Yahoo and Oracle while Mallipeddi worked at Adobe Systems and Informatica.
YourBus helps bus operators to manage the fleet and provide better customer service, while at the same time helping passengers get bus location/delay information on their mobiles in real time. Using Google maps, passengers can also track the location of the bus throughout the journey. The company was incubated at The Morpheus accelerator.
The deal comes as yet another strategic acquisition in Indian digital tech space. Noted deals in the space include Bash Gaming (acquired by US-based Game Show Network LLC), 22feet Communications (acquired by Omnicom Group), Little Eye Labs (acquired by Facebook), and Prizm Payment (acquired by Hitachi). Last week, Indian social music streaming service Dhingana was acquired by Skype co-founder’s music streaming venture Rdio.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)
