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Leading smartphone maker Micromax Informatics on Monday said it has made a strategic investment in ixigo, a mobile travel search and marketplace.
Popular for its innovative travel apps, ixigo helps Indian travellers plan their trips, find the best train and bus services, book the cheapest flights, cabs, hotels and more, Micromax said in a statement.
This investment would further reinforce Micromax’s foray into application services, the company said, adding that it will also give ixigo a reach of over 30 million incremental users over the next year.
Micromax, however, has not divulged the amount or investment details in the statement.
“Our vision is to seamlessly integrate innovative services into smart devices to create an ecosystem that is valuable for our users. We look forward to working closely with them to build on-demand and one-click travel experiences for Micromax consumers,” Rahul Sharma, Co-founder, Micromax Informatics, said.
“We will be announcing more such partnerships over the next few months to accelerate our journey into services,” he added.
Micromax had announced last month that it will be making investments of 0.5-20 million dollars in over 20 start-ups in the coming year. For this objective, it has also set up an M&A team which has been actively sourcing and working with start-ups across major technology markets such as Silicon Valley, Europe, Israel and India to bring in the best products and capabilities.
“We share a common vision of a connected ecosystem of travellers who can access and consume travel content ubiquitously on their phone and compare and book across a bouquet of travel service providers seamlessly,” Aloke Bajpai, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder, ixigo, said.
Eighty per cent of ixigo’s travel and transportation queries and 50 per cent of its transactions currently originate on mobile devices, he said.
“This partnership 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,” Bajpai added.
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