Travel search engine ixigo on Tuesday said it has made an investment in gogoBus as part of the New-Delhi-based premium smart bus platform's first round of funding.
Prominent angel investors including Rajesh Sawhney, co-founder and CEO, Innerchef; and Abhishek Sharma, COO at Dineout also invested in gogoBus, ixigo said in a statement.
Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
The fresh capital has helped gogoBus launch operations in multiple routes in North India. The funds will also enable the company to expand its technology and product team.
gogoBus, which was founded earlier this year by Amit Gupta and Avinash Singh Bagri, has an in-house tech platform for booking, tracking, in-bus engagement and standardized brand new buses and pickup points.
Prior to launching gogoBus, Gupta was part of the core team of venture capital-backed office commute service provider Shuttl while Singh was a co-founder of the Gurugram-based trip planning portal Tripscanners.
Aloke Bajpai, co-founder and CEO at ixigo, said that despite buses being the most popular means of intercity transport in the country, the market is highly fragmented and non-standardized.
gogoBus, which is operated by Gogo Mobility Pvt. Ltd, allows people to make last-minute inter-city bus trip in a smart and affordable manner.
ixigo, which was founded in 2007 by Bajpai and Rajnish Kumar, has earlier invested in other startups as well.
In 2017, ixigo had acqui-hired Rebright and Sol Primero-backed mobile content sharing app Reach.
In 2015, it had acquired Rutogo for inter-city cabs play; and bought intellectual property assets of Desi Backpacking Travelers Pvt. Ltd, which runs budget traveler-focused online community IndianBackpacker.com.
ixigo, which is operated by Le Travenues Technology Pvt. Ltd, has evolved from being a meta-search engine for travel to a travel marketplace. It allows users to compare prices and make bookings across flights, hotels, trains, cabs & destinations from more than 120 travel suppliers and online travel agencies. It has a user base of over 170 million travellers.
ixigo’s investors include Sequoia Capital India, Fosun RZ Capital, SAIF Partners, MakeMyTrip & Micromax.
