Last week, Tek Travels DMCC, a wholly owned subsidiary of TBO Tek Limited (TBO) announced it had acquired 51 per cent stake in BookaBed AG, a B2B accommodation provider to the Irish and UK travel industries, to scale up its business’s services and offerings. The new acquisition will position the Swiss-based BookaBed in reaching out to new markets, under TBO’s global API business and its trade training platform TBO Academy, that trains and educates travel agents and travel trade partners.
Speaking to ArabiaTravelNews.com Gaurav Bhatnagar, joint managing director of TBO said, “Bookabed is one of the most established, well known players in the Ireland and UK markets. Their business footprint is complementary to TBO’s core markets and together we have now an opportunity to leverage each other’s strengths and further expand our presence in current and future markets.”
Tek Travels’ platform is known to connect over 100,000 travel buyers across more than 110 countries with millions of travel suppliers as of October 2021.
“As a global travel distribution platform, our core priorities are to continue to grow our supplier and buyer base. We aim to expand our presence across new markets and continue to double down on our traditionally strong source markets such as India and the Middle East. Apart from this, we intend to continue to invest in technology and data solutions. Inorganic growth is a part of our strategy so we may evaluate more such acquisition opportunities,” said Bhatnagar.
Speaking about new enhancements, Bhatnagar added, “Payments are a very important element in simplifying global travel. At TBO, we currently offer payment options to our buyers through a variety of methods, including credit cards, debit cards and UPI. We continue to explore possibilities to enable new and alternate payment mechanisms.”
As global travel distribution platform, TBO like all its peers were impacted gravely in the last two years. “However, our core value proposition is that we solve the problems of discovery, trust, transactions and service by aggregating global travel supply and global travel demand on our platform. I do believe this remains very relevant in the post COVID world.”
“We believe that new age travel distribution platforms like TBO play a very important role in making global buying and selling of travel simpler. With evolving traveler preferences, today’s travelers demand more options in terms of destinations to travel and experiences. This is where a platform like ours plays an important role,” he added.
Looking ahead Bhatnagar said that there are plans to integrate new supply and products in the platform.
“We have recently opened Cruise and Eurorail bookings. In addition to this, Zamzam, our platform focused on providing pilgrimage service for Umrah, is also a new offering from TBO.”
“Inorganic growth is part of our growth strategy so we will continue to evaluate different opportunities depending upon the requirements of our business and growth strategies.”
TBO Tek Limited is proposing, subject to applicable statutory and regulatory requirements, receipt of requisite approvals, market conditions and other considerations, to undertake an initial public offering of its Equity Shares and has filed a draft red herring prospectus dated December 24, 2021 with the SEBI (the “DRHP”). The DRHP is available on the websites of SEBI, BSE and NSE at www.sebi.gov.in, www.bseindia.com and www.nseindia.com, respectively, and on the websites of the Book Running Lead Managers i.e. Axis Capital Limited, Credit Suisse Securities (India) Private Limited, Jefferies India Private Limited and JM Financial Limited at www.axiscapital.co.in, www.credit-suisse.com, www.jefferies.com and www.jmfl.com, respectively. Potential investors should note that investment in equity shares involves a high degree of risk and for details relating to such risk, see “Risk Factors” beginning on page 29 of the DRHP. Potential investors should not rely on the DRHP for making any investment decision.
The Equity Shares offered in the Offer have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”) or any other applicable law of the United States and, unless so registered, may not be offered or sold within the United States, except pursuant to an exemption from, or in a transaction not subject to, the registration requirements of the Securities Act and applicable state securities laws. Accordingly, the Equity Shares are only being offered and sold (i) within the United States only to persons reasonably believed to be “qualified institutional buyers” (as defined in Rule 144A under the Securities Act, “Rule 144A”) in transactions exempt from, or not subject to, registration requirements of the Securities Act, and (ii) outside the United States in offshore transactions in reliance on Regulation S under the Securities Act and pursuant to the applicable laws of the jurisdictions where those offers and sales are made. There will be no public offering of the Equity Shares in the United States.
