India’s online marketplace, Ibibo Group, a wholly-owned unit of JSE-listed media giant, Naspers, has acquired India’s bus ticketing service provider, RedBus, for an undisclosed amount, it emerged at the weekend.

Analysts described this deal as India’s biggest internet transaction since US’s Ebay acquired India’s Baazee.com in a $55 million deal in 2004.

It is understood that Ibibo plans to include RedBus to its current travel businesses.

But RedBus will be an independent unit with the owners Phanindra Sama and Charan Padmaraju continuing in their roles as CEO and product developer respectively.

The conclusion of the deal confirms rife speculation that was doing the rounds last week that Naspers was about to buy RedBus.

Meanwhile Naspers on Monday said it is anticipating robust financial results for the year ended March. The results will be released tomorrow.

According to a recent trading update, Naspers is expecting core headline earnings a share to be between 15 percent and 25 percent higher than the previous comparable period’s 1.850c.

It is believed that the media firm’s growth comes from external investments in technology units like Chinese internet firm Tencent and Russian e-mail service Mail.ru.

In April, Mail.ru posted a 29.4 percent surge in revenue and a 37.6 percent net profit upturn to $275 million.

Tencent, in the first quarter of this year, posted a 37.1 percent year on year net profit rise to $645.1 million.

Naspers has more than 30 percent shareholding in Mail.ru and Tencent, respectively.

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