ixigo Takes Over Confirmtkt in a Stock Plus Cash Deal

Gurugram-based ixigo, an AI-based travel app, has entered into a definitive share purchase agreement to acquire 100 percent shareholding of Confirmtkt for an undisclosed amount across a mix of cash and ixigo stock. Confirmtkt is a Bangalore-based online train discovery and booking platform and was established in 2015 by Dinesh Kumar Kotha and Sripad Vaidya.

As a part of the deal, the founders of ixigo will join Confirmtkt board. The existing investors of Confirmtkt, including Venture Catalysts, will be exiting the company fully as a part of the deal. Both companies will continue to run independently, post this acquisition.

Both ixigo and Confirmtkt are official IRCTC B2C premium ticketing partners for online train reservations in India. This deal will help the group to consolidate its presence in tier II, III and IV markets with its combined user base of nearly 200 million Indians.

"We remain committed as a team towards our joint vision of serving the underserved market segment and to become the first transactional touchpoint for millions of Indian travellers in the times to come"

Aloke Bajpai and Rajnish Kumar, Co-Founders, ixigo said, "ixigo and Confirmtkt founders both share the passion and focus to grow the train utility and ticketing space. Confirmtkt has built an innovative and high growth company with a great product-market fit and laser sharp focus on train related use-cases. By leveraging our combined user base, resources, and tech expertise we will be able to enhance the experience of millions of train travellers in India every day. The combined entity will have a scale of 35 Million Monthly Active Users, and our endeavour in the coming year will be to drive faster growth and deeper penetration in the 'Next Billion User' segment."

Dinesh Kumar Kotha and Sripad Vaidya, Co-Founders, Confirmtkt said, "We started Confirmtkt with a vision to change the way people book train tickets in India and made it a hassle free experience. We are happy that we were able to build a motivated, tightly-knit team and we grew rapidly to become one of the leading train ticketing startups in the country. We are excited to now join hands with ixigo whose team and products have created new benchmarks in the travel industry. We remain committed as a team towards our joint vision of serving the underserved market segment and to become the first transactional touchpoint for millions of Indian travellers in the times to come."