| [June 29, 2012] |
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Norwest Venture Partners & Intel Capital Portfolio Company, Yatra.com, to Acquire Travelguru.com
GURGAON, India --(Business Wire)--
Yatra.com,
India's leading online travel company, today announced it has agreed to
acquire a 100% stake in Travelguru
from Travelocity Global. Travelguru will continue to operate as a
separate entity under its existing brand name.
The acquisition of Travelguru will strengthen Yatra.com's position as
the leading company in the Indian online travel space and substantially
extend its position as the premiere aggregator and seller of domestic
hotels and holidays in India, adding to its already strong offerings for
flights and outbound holidays.
Travelguru is India's largest hotel distribution network offering access
to more than 6500 hotels in India and 72,000 hotels worldwide. It offers
travelers the opportunity to plan and purchase their travel in a
transparent, easy and customizable manner with instant bookings and
confirmations. Keenly focused on growing Indian hotel demand, Indian
hotel supply and a wide distribution network, Travelguru facilitates a
broad range of travel options and recommendations for domestic as well
as international travelers.
Commenting on this new development, Mr. Promod
Haque, Managing Partner, Norwest
Venture Partners (NVP) and Chairman of Yatra.com,
said, "We seeded and launched Yatra.com six years back and are
immensely proud of the company's successful growth and execution. We
believe that this acquisition will significantly broaden and diversify
Yatra's business and marks an important milestone for the future."
Commenting on this new development, Mr. Dhruv
Shringi, co-founder and CEO, Yatra.com, said, "This
acquisition will significantly strengthen our domestic hotels and
holidays business and reinforces our growth strategy and long term
commitment and belief in the Indian online travel industry. Not only
will this consolidation increase our customer base, but it also widens
our product portfolio and leverages our ability to bundle solutions,
offering better deals and value propositions to our customers. The
acquisition will also provide Travelguru's hotel partners with a much
wider distribution network through Yatra.com and its B2B network of
10,000+ agents."
Previously, Yatra.com acquired ticket consolidator Travel Services
International Pvt. Ltd (TSI (News - Alert)) to strengthen its foray into the B2B
consolidation space. In July 2011, Yatra.com acquired hotel aggregation
company, MagicRooms, offering access to a live inventory of over 3,000
hotels across India. In January, 2012, premier event and entertainment
promotion portal Buzzintown was acquired by Yatra.com expanding Yatra's
portfolio and giving consumers the access to service beyond travel.
About Norwest Venture Partners (NVP)
Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) is a global venture and growth equity
investment firm that manages more than $3.7 billion in capital.
Headquartered in Palo Alto (News - Alert), California, NVP has subsidiaries in Mumbai
and Bengaluru, India and Herzelia, Israel and Hong Kong. NVP makes early
to late stage venture and growth equity investments across a wide range
of sectors including: information technology, business services,
financial services, infrastructure, technology enabled services and
consumer. NVP has actively partnered with entrepreneurs to build great
businesses for more than 50 years and has funded over 500 companies
since inception. For more information visit: www.nvp.com.
About Yatra.com
Yatra.com is India's leading online travel company. Positioned as a
brand "Creating Happy Travelers," it provides information, pricing,
availability, and booking facility for domestic and international air
travel, railway reservation, hotel bookings, holiday packages, buses,
and car rentals. We offer a host of travel services designed to make
business and leisure travel easier.
Based in Gurgaon, India, Yatra is a one-stop-shop for all travel-related
services. A leading consolidator of travel products, Yatra.com provides
reservation facility for more than 5,000 hotels across 336 cities in
India and over 90,000 hotels around the world. Through continued
excellence in providing travel solutions, responses to booking travel
online through Yatra.com have also reached new heights with the company
doing 20,000 domestic tickets and 1000 hotels and holiday packages
bookings a day.
Customers can access Yatra.com through multiple ways: through our
user-friendly website, 24x7 multi-lingual call center, a countrywide
network of Holiday Lounges and Yatra Travel Express stores or through
their mobile phones. Yatra.com provides booking facility for all the
popular as well as exotic national and international destinations.
Launched in August 2006, Yatra is today ranked as the leading provider
of consumer-direct travel services in India. Yatra.com has emerged as
the most trusted travel brand in India and we were recently voted 'Most
Trusted Brand of India' in the online travel category by Brand Equity.
Yatra.com also received the coveted most preferred online travel company
award twice at the CNBC/Awaaz Consumer Travel Awards.
Our Investors
Yatra.com is backed by well-known and reputable investors: Norwest
Venture Partners (NVP), Reliance Capital, Network 18, Intel Capital (News - Alert) and
Valiant Capital Partners.
Read
more about our investors.
You can also follow Yatra.com on:
http://www.facebook.com/Yatra
http://twitter.com/#!/yatraholidays

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