Inter-city mobility startup gogoBus has acquired BusYar, a Ranchi-based bus transport aggregator.
The acquisition, which is an all-stock deal, is part of New Delhi-based gogoBus' plan to expand its reach across the country.
The co-founders of BusYar have also joined the core team of gogoBus as part of the transaction, as per a press statement. The deal value was not disclosed.
gogoBus, which was hit by the pandemic, has recently resumed operations. The startup, operated by GOGO Mobility Pvt. Ltd, now aims to foray into the eastern region of the country through this acquisition.
"The idea is to transform the basic bus transport into a premium bus service across eastern India and our target is to cover Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, and Odisha," said Amit Gupta, co-founder of gogoBus.
BusYar was launched in the middle of last year by Devashish Sinha and Abhishek Narayan. Sinha had earlier worked with Tata Consultancy Services, Narayan with SunTec Business Solutions.
The company ferries over 1.5 lakh people in Jharkhand.
gogoBus
gogoBus, which was founded earlier this year by Amit Gupta and Avinash Singh Bagri, has an in-house tech platform for booking and tracking, among others.
Prior to launching gogoBus, Gupta was part of the core team of venture capital-backed office commute service provider Shuttl while Singh is a co-founder of Gurugram-based trip planning portal Tripscanners.
In March this year, gogoBus raised an undisclosed amount in investment led by travel search engine ixigo.
Deals in the travel segment
In June, Yolo TravelTech Pvt. Ltd, which operates inter-city transportation and mobility platform Yolo, raised $3.3 million in its Series A round of funding led by Nexus Venture Partners.
Another startup operating in the space is Travelyaari, which in August 2016 raised $7 million in a Series B funding round from investors such as Gujarat Venture Finance Ltd and Bennett Coleman & Co Ltd (BCCL).
Travel platforms such as Ibibo, MakeMyTrip, and Paytm also offer their own bus-ticketing services.
Gurugram-based Shuttl, for instance, is set to raise $8.1 million (around Rs 57.42 crore) as part of its Series C funding round from SIG Global India Fund I, LLP. SIG Global is operated by US-based quantitative trading firm Susquehanna International Group.
