After Healthifyme.com, Micromax invests in ixigo

India's leading smartphone handset player, Micromax Informatics Limited, on Monday announced its investment in ixigo, a mobile travel search and marketplace.

ixigo helps Indian travellers plan their trips, find the best train and bus services, book cheapest flights, cabs, hotels and more. Following the investment, Micromax will strengthen its foray into application services. It will also give ixigo a reach of over 30 million incremental users over the next year.

Rahul Sharma, Co-founder, Micromax Informatics said, "We are really impressed with ixigo's talented team and its mobile technology. We look forward to working closely with them to build on-demand and one-click travel experiences for Micromax consumers. We will be announcing more such partnerships over the next few months to accelerate our journey into services."

Micromax had last month announced that it would be making investments of 20 million dollars in over 20 startups in the coming year.

For this objective, Micromax has also set up an M&A team which has been actively sourcing and working with startups across major technology markets such as Silicon Valley, Europe, Israel and India to bring in the best products and capabilities.

Meanwhile, Aloke Bajpai, CEO & co-founder, ixigo said, "Eighty per cent of our travel & transportation queries and 50% of our transactions currently originate on mobile devices. This partnership with Micromax will strengthen our market leadership in mobile travel services for middle class users. We expect to quadruple our mobile user-base in the next 12 months."

ixigo aims to provide relevant travel services to the next 300 million smartphone users, and has recently entered the budget hotels, packages & cabs segments. It plans to use this investment for expanding its product & technology team and to add 25,000 small and mid-sized travel service providers to its marketplace offering, making ixigo the most comprehensive platform for comparing and buying travel services on mobile.
(Image: Indiatimes)