AI-driven travel app ixigo on Thursday said it has acquired Hyderabad-based bus ticketing and aggregation platform AbhiBus, for an undisclosed sum.

The Abhibus team, led by Founder Sudhakar Reddy Chirra, have joined the ixigo team, and all intellectual property, brands, technology and operations are being transferred to ixigo, the company said in a statement.

"By leveraging our combined user base, multi-modal transportation capabilities, tech resources and travel domain expertise we will be able to enhance the experience of millions of travellers in India every day," said Aloke Bajpai and Rajnish Kumar, Co-Founders, ixigo.

As per industry reports, AbhiBus was the second largest bus aggregator in India in FY20, selling 26,000 bus tickets per day through its platform.

This deal will help the ixigo group to consolidate its presence in Tier 2,3 and 4 markets by offering a multi-modal transportation experience across trains, flights and buses to its combined user base of nearly 255 million users.

"We started AbhiBus with a vision to become India's most preferred bus booking platform. We are happy that we were able to build a motivated, tightly-knit team and we grew rapidly to become one of the leading bus ticketing players in the country," said Sudhakar Reddy Chirra, Founder and CEO, AbhiBus.

This is ixigo's second acquisition this year. In February 2021, ixigo acquired train booking app Confirmtkt.

ixigo is an AI-based travel app based in Gurugram, and offers train, flight and bus bookings across the ixigo, Confirmtkt and AbhiBus brands.