ixigo Expands Partnership With PhonePe, Adds Bus And Flight Bookings

While expanding its existing train partnership with PhonePe, online travel platform Ixigo has now joined hands with the Walmart-backed digital payments unicorn to offer flight and bus bookings on the latter’s app.

This comes close on the heels of Le Travenues Technology, the parent company of ixigo, making a strong debut on the stock exchanges last Tuesday, opening significantly higher than the issue price. On the NSE, ixigo shares opened at INR 138.10 per share, a 48.5% increase from the issue price of INR 93, while it opened at INR 135 apiece, up 45.16% from the issue price on BSE.

Earlier, ixigo claims to have partnered with PhonePe to facilitate train bookings for the latter’s users on the app.

ixigo will exclusively power these travel booking options on PhonePe, integrating services from ixigo flights for flight bookings, AbhiBus for bus bookings as well as expanding its prior partnership with ConfirmTkt for train bookings, the company said in a statement.

Founded in 2007 by Aloke Bajpai and Rajnish Kumar, ixigo is a travel search website to help users compare flight deals. The company offers travel services like flights, trains, bus tickets, and hotel bookings, and holiday packages. Its listed competitors include EaseMyTrip, Yatra, and MakeMyTrip.

The company also claimed that the partnership will enable over 54 Cr PhonePe users to experience more comprehensive travel booking and utility services for flights, trains and buses. 

On the other hand, PhonePe users will be able to have the advantage of advanced features and value-added services from the ixigo Group, including ixigo Assured (free cancellation), ixigo Assured Flex, Abhi Assured among others to book fully flexible and freely reschedulable flight, train and bus tickets, and get instant refunds of their fare upon cancellation, the company added.

Aloke Bajpai, group chief executive at ixigo, said, “This collaboration will particularly benefit travelers from Tier II and III cities, leveraging ixigo’s products & offerings for the next billion users and PhonePe’s growing penetration in smaller towns and its fintech expertise.”

Sameer Nigam, founder of PhonePe said, “With rising disposable incomes and growing aspirations of Indian travelers, we are seeing rapid adoption of our travel offerings. The ixigo, ConfirmTkt & AbhiBus apps offer great customer experience ideal for catering to the fast evolving travel needs of Indians.”