Ixigo acquires Bengaluru's Confirmtkt in stock & cash deal

The deal will give a big push to train travel, Ixigo co-founder Aloke Bajpai has said.

Travel aggregator Ixigo has acquired Bengaluru-based online train discovery and booking platform Confirmtkt for an undisclosed amount in a cash and stock deal, the company said on February 4.

The founders of Ixigo will join the Confirmtkt board and existing investors, including Venture Catalysts, will be exiting the company fully as a part of the deal. Both companies will continue to run independently after acquisition.

"Confirmtkt has built an innovative and high growth company with a great product-market fit and laser sharp focus on train related use-cases. By leveraging our combined user base, resources, and tech expertise we will be able to enhance the experience of millions of train travellers in India every day," Ixigo co-founder Aloke Bajpai said.
As of pre-COVID, the train travel in India has been touted to be a $8-billion market, with more than 25 million passengers taking a trip every day.

According to Ixigo, resumption of train services and relaxation of lockdown norms have led to swift recovery of reserved ticketing to near pre-COVID levels.

Both Ixigo and Confirmtkt are official IRCTC B2C premium ticketing partners for online train reservations in India. This deal will help the group to consolidate its presence in Tier 3-4 markets with its combined user base of nearly 200 million Indians.

"The combined entity will have a scale of 35 million monthly active users, and our endeavour in the coming year will be to drive faster growth and deeper penetration in the next billion user segment," Bajpai added.

Confirmtkt was set up in 2015 by Dinesh Kumar Kotha and Sripad Vaidya. The company recorded revenue of Rs 21.4 crore and an operating profit of Rs.1.54 crore in the financial year 2020. The app claims to be having over 20 million downloads so far.

Ixigo, founded in 2007, reported a net revenue of Rs 153 crore during the financial year under review with an EBIDTA loss of Rs 5.4 crore.

In a post on microblogging website, Bajpai, also said this year's revenue was greater than the total primary capital the company raised so far.

Ixigo had in 2020 sold off one of its wholly-owned subsidiary Travenues to SpiceJet which it had launched with much fanfare a year ago.

Travenues was the technology platform business for travel suppliers and offered travel-tech airline commerce and ancillary sales platforms to airlines. The idea was to help the airlines power their own consumer experiences through the B2B offering. However, the company soon realised it didn't want to scale up the business.