Yatra Acquires Nexus-backed MagicRooms

Gurgaon-based online travel agency (OTA) Yatra Online Pvt Ltd has acquired Bangalore-based Magic Rooms Solutions India (P) Ltd, a hotels aggregation site backed by Nexus Venture Partners. MagicRooms has been founded by Niranjan Gupta, co-founder of online travel agency Via (formerly FlightRaja).

MagicRooms operates an Internet-enabled global distribution system (GDS) for hotel rooms in India and abroad. Its platform allows users to integrate their hotels' property management systems (PMS) with travel agents, travel portals and websites, and corporate houses, for the distribution of room inventory and rates.

MagicRooms was launched in 2009 and last year got Rs 7 crore in funding from Nexus Venture Partners. At that time, MagicRooms also signed up MakeMyTrip, one of India's key OTAs, as its customer.

However, queries sent to Yatra founder and CEO Dhruv Shringhi did not elicit any response. Suvir Sujan, co-founder and partner at Nexus, has confirmed that it has exited MagicRooms, but declined to comment further.

The acquisition comes as Yatra, one of the largest OTAs along with NASDAQ-listed MakeMyTrip and Cleartrip, has been looking to expand its holiday and hotel-booking services. Yatra had raised Rs 200 crore in pre-IPO funding, led by Valiant Capital Management, with Norwest Venture Partners and Intel Capital participating as well.

In October, 2010, Yatra acquired New Delhi-based Travel Services International for an undisclosed sum and entered the ticket consolidation space.