ibiboGroup, which operates bus booking services provider redBus.in has rolled out the services in Singapore and Malaysia. With this launch, travellers can book inter-city bus tickets between Singapore and Malaysia and between cities within Malaysia using redBus.
The services will be made available under the domain www.redbus.sg and native mobile apps on iOS and Android. Ticket booking can be made either in Singapore dollars or in Malaysian Ringgits.
The company said this is part of the launch of the redBus global platform that supports multiple currencies, languages, time-zones and integrated with international payment systems.
In June 2013, IbiboGroup, a joint venture between South African media giant Naspers and Chinese internet company Tencent had acquired Pilani Soft Labs that operates redBus.in. It had acquired redBus.in at an estimated enterprise value of around $100 million. In 2014, ibiboGroup had also acquired Bengaluru-based vehicle tracking application YourBus.
Commenting on the Singapore entry, Ashish Kashyap, Founder and CEO of ibiboGroup said, “Ever since the acquisition in 2013, we have worked hard to build out the new global platform, mobile apps and a solid management and technology team lead by Prakash. This has resulted in the growth of redBus.in accelerating to 80 per cent year on year, market share further growing to 75 per cent, mobile becoming a 40 per cent share in transactions and all of this culminating to the launch of redBus in Singapore and Malaysia”.
redBus has aggregated supply spanning 5,700 bus routes in Singapore and Malaysia across large number of bus operators. On a daily basis, there are more than 100,000 seats available for sale.
“The bus market in many countries is similar to that in India, characterized by a fragmented bus operator base and largely unorganized or semi-organized. As a result, much of the ticket booking happens offline at the physical ticketing counters of the bus operators,” said Prakash Sangam, CEO of redBus.
In India, IbiboGroup operates integrated travel properties such as Goibibo.com, redBus.in and YourBus. It has recently launched car sharing app ibibo Ryde. According to the company, more than 3 million unique users transact with ibibo platforms every month.
