The Inside View

RateGain paid $16.1 million for the acquisition, with an upfront payment of $14.6 million and a deferred payment of $1.5 million to be paid in one year.  

ADARA has raised a total of $67.1 million in funding over six rounds, with World Innovation Lab (WiL) and QuestMark Partners as the lead investors. As of September 14, 2015, ADARA had a post-money valuation of $100 million to $500 million. Source: Crunchbase 

ADARA is the fourth acquisition of RateGain after Myhotelshop in September 2021, BCV in June 2019, and DHISCO in August 2018.

Though the dipping revenues over the course of the last three years of the pandemic made this decision by Adara an inevitable move for sustenance and growth. Source: Tracxn

Deal Differentiators

Commenting on the acquisition Bhanu Chopra, Chairman and Founder, RateGain said, “We are delighted to welcome the Adara team to the RateGain family. Adara’s key differentiator is its access to permissioned travel-intent data from the World’s top travel and hospitality players as well as the destination marketing organisations and relying less on traditional methods of tracking consumer intent. Their focus on innovation and delivering customer excellence has me convinced that together we will help the industry with reliable end-to-end intent and real-time pricing insights making it simpler for them to identify guests, acquire and retain them.”

As per the investor presentation by RateGain, Adara will bolster both the DaaS and Martech business lines of RateGain while providing a strong moat for the business with 70+ data partners and expanding the footprint across all industry segments. Adara comes in with a strong profile, further bolstering the expansion and dominance of RateGain in the travel and hospitality industries.

The Bigger Picture

A platform like this is necessary today for the industry to react to shifting customer expectations.

• Travellers are increasingly turning to digital channels for inspiration, research, booking, and engagement, making it more expensive for brands to attract them as customers. 
• As a result of rising costs and the desire for more distinctive experiences, customers are looking to test out various brands that can offer them more value through individualised experiences and offers, but brands that don’t offer these perks are losing out to competitors who do.

Our Take on the News

Even though leaving when you’re at the top of your game makes sense in this situation, the marketing landscape is drastically changing, making a data-driven strategy, the use of artificial intelligence to study consumer purchase behaviour, their interaction in the online world, technology enablement for seamless platform transitions, and curating experiential offerings all essential.

The timing of this transaction is unquestionably ideal, aiding the recovery of the tourism and hospitality sectors. Watching how this takeover develops and creates value in the near future will be intriguing.

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Paytm is reportedly looking to acquire Noida-based last-minute hotel booking app, NightStay, for around $20 million. The development was confirmed by NightStay founder Nasr Khan in a news report by VCCircle.

NightStay was started by Nasr Khan in December 2014 with a basic alpha app. The beta version of the product was announced in March 2015. The idea behind NightStay was to create a platform that can provide instant hotel bookings for travellers while assuring a high quality of service and hygiene.

NighStay offers hotels an open and flexible option to provide flash accessibility on its app. They can make their inventories available on the NightStay app, which is available from 12:00 noon till 12:00 midnight, and increase their footfall while maintaining their brand identity.

The startup is present in cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Goa, Chennai, and Hyderabad. It raised a $500K funding in August 2015 from BedRock Ventures and angel investors Rajesh Sawhney of GSF and Shailesh Vickram Singh, a partner at SeedFund.
According to reports, the Paytm’s acquisition of NightStay signals the digital payments company’s foray into the hospitality space.

The NightStay acquisition is a step ahead in this direction for Paytm. In May, Paytm had acquired Chennai-based online ticketing platform TicketNew to boost its entertainment arm.

Earlier this month, it invested $8.95 million (INR 61 Crore) in Entertainment armand also gave its Paytm Inbox users access to free in-app content across categories such as Live TV, News, Cricket, Entertainment Videos, and Games on the go. In July 2017, Paytm also acquired a majority stake in Insider.in, an events ticketing platform, to tap into the rapidly growing live entertainment space in India.

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Mumbai-headquartered travel-tech startup Goomo said it has acquired a B2B vehicle-rental marketplace WagonBee. Founded by Navneet Misra and Vikash Singh in 2016, Noida-based WagonBee is currently present in over 40 cities across India with nearly 8,000 itineraries and connections.The two companies did not disclose the size of the deal.

Goomo is an omni-channel travel-tech company that distributes travel products and services through online and offline channels. Commenting on the deal, Varun Gupta, CEO of Goomo, said, “The acquisition of WagonBee will help Goomo add road transportation services to its list of offerings, and further drive the brand’s promise of delivering end-to-end travel solutions to customers. Over and above this, the acquisition further reiterates our constant endeavour to build our overall tech competencies and develop the best technology-driven travel platform in the country.

Discussing the growth of the marketplace, Navneet Mishra, co-founder of WagonBee added, “The Indian car rental market is estimated to be around $15 million to $18 million and is expected to grow 17 to 20 percent year-on-year. WagonBee and Goomo are a perfect synergistic match given the similarities in our understanding of this fragmented market. We share a common vision of how this space can be organised better.”

The acquisition comes at a time of stiff competition in the B2B car rental marketplace. Several companies, including Ola, Uber and Carzonrent are cashing in on the corporate car rental opportunity, as the market is still largely fragmented across the country.

Last year, Goomo had raised $50 million from a Mauritius-based fund manager, Emerging India, to build its online platform, products, marketing, and establishing its offline partner network. Goomo has launched its services with bookings for flights and holidays, and trade fairs and will soon be expanding it to include hotels, trains, buses and visas online. In another similar move, Goomo had earlier acquired Zopky, a holiday marketplace startup to build its presence in the holiday packages space.

In the last one year since its inception in 2017, the company has set up its online platform, created new products, acquired customers and established a partner-network. The company also plans to invest considerably in technology to streamline and automate the online booking process, provide white label solutions to its offline partners to provide a better experience to its customers.

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The grapevine is bantering around the bush. Uber may acquire Ola’s controlling stakes soon. The warheads at taxi aggregating service could shake hands to close the deal soon.

The national broadsheet DNA India hopped on some information from a source claiming that except for Japanese investor SoftBank, the rest of the promoters from Bengaluru’s based start-up, including promoters Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, would exit.

Image: Uber taxi by alper/ ( CC BY 2.0)

The enterprise’s value has been estimated around $4 billion and Aggarwal’s stake of around 17% has been valued at $580 million. However, the stake of the biggest shareholder, SoftBank would remain same; 26%.

“Uber is buying a controlling stake in Ola, where all the shareholders, except SoftBank, is being bought out. The enterprise valuation is being estimated at $4billion,”

said the unknown source.

More details are still to roll out as the deal is being worked upon. The heedfulness would be completed and the term sheet could be signed in the current quarter itself.

From what is being eyed, there were no confirmations or denials from Ola’s spokespersons or executive. They denied to give any confirmation yet and the calls to Anand Subramaniam, marketing and communication director, don’t have any trails to follow.

If the deal goes through, it will establish Uber’s market dominance in the domestic sector. Currently, Ola is the market leader with reportedly 40% share against Uber’s 25-30%. In terms of drivers too, Ola has an edge over Uber with almost 3.5 lakh drivers as compared to the aggregator’s 2.5 lakh. Ola was launched in 2010 with Uber following it after 3 years in India.

The two have been engaged in a battle for market share for long now. In order to expand their operations, Ola had acquired TaxiforSure back last year for $200 million.

Besides SoftBank, Ola’s investors include Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital. Late last year, it had raised a whooping $500 million from Baillie Gifford, Tiger Global, SoftBank Group and others to escalate its fight against Uber and Meru, another primary significant player in the market.

Source: dnaIndia

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