Travel aggregator ixigo files for $215 mn IPO

Le Travenues Technology Ltd, parent holding of travel platform ixigo, has filed a draft red herring prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) for an initial public offering (IPO). 

The IPO, to the tune of Rs 1,600 crore ($215 million), consists of a fresh issue of Rs 750 crore and an offer for sale (OFS) of Rs 850 crore by its existing shareholders and promoters.   

Co-founders Aloke Bajpai and Rajnish Kumar are selling shares worth Rs 50 crore each.  

Saif Partners India IV, now managed by Elevation Capital is selling shares worth Rs 550 crore and Micromax Informatics is planning a Rs 200 crore share sale.   

Read: In second acquisition ahead of IPO, ixigo buys AbhiBus 

Currently, Aloke Bajpai holds 9.18% stake in the firm, Rajnish Kumar (8.79%), SAIF Partners (23.97%) and Micromax has 7.61%.  

ICICI Securities, Axis Capital, Kotak Mahindra Capital, Nomura Financial Advisory and Securities are the lead managers to the issue.  

The proceeds from the issue will be used for organic and inorganic growth initiatives.   

Organic growth initiatives include costs incurred towards discounts and other promotional incentives to attract new users to OTA platforms, sales, marketing and distribution expenses and investments in the development of our technology infrastructure.   

Inorganic growth initiatives include acquisitions and other strategic initiatives.   

The company acquired Confirmtkt in February 2021 and Abhibus earlier this month.   

Launched in 2007 by Aloke Bajpai and Rajnish Kumar, ixigo is a technology company focused on helping Indian travellers to plan, book and manage their trips across rail, air, buses and hotels.   

It assists travellers in making smarter travel decisions by leveraging artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science led innovations on OTA platforms, comprising its websites and mobile applications.  

Its OTA platforms allow travellers to book train tickets, flight tickets, bus tickets, hotels and cabs, while providing travel utility tools and services developed using in-house proprietary algorithms and crowd-sourced information, including train PNR status and confirmation predictions, train seat availability alerts, train running status updates and delay predictions, flight status updates, bus running status, pricing and availability alerts, deal discovery, destination content, personalised recommendations, instant fare alerts for flights and automated customer support services.  

For FY21, it is the largest Indian OTA in the online train bookings segment and train-centric mobile applications. ixigo trains and ConfirmTkt, were collectively the leading B2C distribution platforms for IRCTC with 42% market share, in terms of rail bookings among the OTAs and B2C distributors of IRCTC.   

Its bus focused app, AbhiBus, was the second-largest bus-ticketing OTA in India, with a 10% market share in online bus ticket bookings. 

It is also the third-largest flight OTA in India with a market share of 12% in online air bookings.  

The Gurugram-based online travel ticket aggregator's combined gross transaction value (taking into account the operations of ConfirmTkt and AbhiBus in the relevant period) was at Rs 2,694.60 crore.   

It has the highest app usage among OTAs with 37.48 million users and is also the fastest growing OTA in terms of app downloads, with 3.75 million monthly app downloads in March 2021.  

Despite the impact of Covid-19, it had 136.26 million unique users and 8.56 million transactions were booked through its OTA platforms. In the June quarter, ixigo trains mobile app was the 10th most downloaded travel and navigation app globally.  

For FY21, the firm reported a total income of Rs 138.41 crore versus Rs 112.96 crore a year ago. Net profit for the period stood at  Rs 7.53 crore against a loss of  Rs 26.61 crore last year.   

Net debt for the fiscal year was at Rs 99.62 crore versus Rs 19.97 crore last year.