Elevation Capital and SCI Investments are biggest shareholders in the company
MakeMyTrip exited ixigo, seeing an 8X return on its investment
ixigo is looking to list publicly before the year’s end and acquired Abhibus last week
Gurugram-based online travel ticket aggregator Le Travenues Technology, parent company of ixigo, has filed its draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) with market regulator SEBI and is eyeing to raise INR 1,600 Cr through an initial public offering. The travel aggregator’s offer includes an issue of fresh shares worth INR 750 Cr and an offer-for-sale worth INR 850 Cr. The issue is expected to give an exit opportunity to early investors like Elevation Capital and Indian smartphone manufacturer Micromax.
The company is backed by Elevation Capital, Sequoia Capital India, Trifecta Capital, Fosun RZ Capital, and InfoEdge among others. In 2011, Elevation Capital and Nasdaq-listed MakeMyTrip invested $18.5 Mn in ixigo. Till date, ixigo has raised $88 Mn in funding.
MMT reported earlier this month that it saw an 8x return on its investment to the tune of $38.5 Mn when it exited ixigo in a pre-IPO round worth $53 Mn led by Singapore government’s sovereign fund GIC. As per the DRHP, MMT sold its 10.33% stake in ixigo last year.
The travel company posted INR 135.5 Cr in revenue from operations in FY21, up 21.5% from INR 111.5 Cr it posted in FY20. Total expenses dropped to INR 135.6 Cr in FY21 from INR 139.5 Cr in FY20. As a result, the company posted a profit of INR 7.53 Cr in FY 21, compared to INR 26.6 Cr loss in FY20.
As per the DRHP, cofounders Aloke Bajpai and Rajnish Kumar will offload shares worth INR 50 Cr respectively. While Elevation Capital will be offloading INR 550 Cr of shares, Micromax will be selling shares worth INR 200 Cr. Elevation Capital owns 88,563,200 shares and Micromax holds 28,110,400 of shares in the company.
How ixigo’s Shareholding Pattern Looked Like Pre-IPO
Elevation Capital is the largest shareholder in the company and owns a 23.97% stake in ixigo. Sequoia Capital India held the second largest stake with 16.02%, followed by GIC, which owns a 9.89% stake in the company. Cofounders Bajpai and Kumar own 9.18% and 8.79% stake respectively, while smartphone manufacturer Micromax is the sixth largest stakeholder with 7.61% stake.
In total, 14 shareholders own 96.12% of stake in the company.
Both Bajpai and Kumar graduated from IIT Kanpur in 2001. Before taking an entrepreneurial plunge, both the founders worked for Madrid-headquartered IT giant Amadeus. In 2007, Bajpai and Kumar launched Le Travenues Technology and ixigo to offer bus, train, flight ticketing as well as hotel booking and holiday planning. ixigo locks its horns with MMT, and its subsidiary Goibibo, Yatra, EaseMyTrip, Cleartrip among other players.
In the past year, it acquired train booking app Confirmtkt, and bus ticketing platform called AbhiBus in an attempt to boost its revenue generation in these verticals. ixigo’s various platforms cumulatively boast of having 37.48 Mn monthly users and 2.44 Bn monthly screenviews. According to the DRHP, as of March 31, 2021, the cumulative aggregate number of downloads for ixigo’s train and flight booking apps and ConfirmTkt was 255 Mn. The number of transactions undertaken during FY2021 was 8.56 Mn.
As per the industry experts, the travel sector is dominated by MMT and GoIbibo, who own 60% of the market. The remaining 40% is split between Cleartrip, RailYatra, ixigo, EaseMyTrip, Yatra as well as the likes of Amazon and Paytm, which have travel booking offerings as well. As per Indian Brand Equity Foundation, India’s tourism sector is expected to grow at 6.7% CAGR to reach $488 Bn and will account for 9.2% of India’s GDP.
While MMT posted revenue of $32.8 Mn in Q1 FY 22, a 416% from $6.4 Mn in Q1 FY21, publicly-listed Easy Trip Planner, the parent company of EaseMyTrip. EaseMyTrip posted revenue of INR 57 Cr in Q4 FY21, ending March 2021, as compared to INR 31.55 Cr in the same quarter in FY20. Nasdaq-listed Yatra saw its revenue grow to INR 50.68 Cr in Q4 FY21, a 64% rise from INR 30.9 Cr in Q4 of FY20. Indian ecommerce giant Flipkart also forayed into the travel sector by acquiring 15-year-old Cleartrip for an undisclosed amount. Cleartrip continues to operate as a separate entity, but the entry of Flipkart will greatly intensify competition in the travel sector for ixigo and others given Flipkart’s user base of 200 Mn.
