ixigo eyes growth in buses; makes minority strategic investment in inter-city bus startup
New Delhi, India: AI-based travel app ixigo has invested an undisclosed amount in premium smart bus platform, gogoBus. Based out of New Delhi, gogoBus is a full-stack mobility company with a vision to transform inter-city ground transportation into a safe, comfortable and enjoyable experience. It offers a unique asset-light model with standardized brand new buses, self-operated lounge, pre-defined pickup points, and a strong in-house tech platform for booking, tracking & in-bus safety features.
ixigo’s investment is a part of gogoBus’s first round of funding, alongside other prominent angel investors including Rajesh Sawhney (Co-founder & CEO, Innerchef) and Abhishek Sharma (COO, Dineout). With this investment, gogoBus has launched operations on multiple routes in North India and will be expanding its product & technology team.
Commenting on the investment, Aloke Bajpai, Co-founder & CEO, ixigo said “Despite buses being the most popular means of inter-city transport in the country, the market is highly fragmented and non-standardized, with many pain-points worth solving in this segment. Generally, travellers end up planning a last-minute inter-city bus trip due to the lack of availability on trains and high flight fares. gogoBus allows people to do so in a smart and affordable manner.”
Adding to this, Rajnish Kumar, Co-Founder & CTO, ixigo, said, “The bus market in India is quite attractive with over 5 Billion bus trips a year. The gogoBus team’s prior operating experience with buses, domain knowledge of travel and transportation, coupled with ixigo’s demand-side scale will help disrupt the bus travel market in a big way.”
Amit Gupta, Co-Founder, gogoBus, said, “Our aim is to set new standards when it comes to comfort and safety in bus travel. We offer a wide range of features including customized reclinable luxury seats, GPS enabled buses, predefined pit stops & trained, verified & uniformed drivers to give an exemplary experience to all bus travellers. Within a month of launch, gogoBus takes pride in having covered 5,00,000+ km with a 4.8 rating on Google Play Store.”
Catering to a cumulative user base of 170 Million and 30 Million Monthly Active Users, ixigo has witnessed dramatic growth since the launch of its apps, crossing 1.5 million passenger tickets booked per month across flights, hotels, buses and trains. The travel app has built numerous industry-first AI-innovations for deal discovery, personalized recommendations, airfare predictions, train delay information, PNR confirmation status and more, enabling Indians to make smarter travel decisions.
