In October, Prosus invested over Rs 1,800 crore in Ixigo. The investment, made in two rounds, makes the Dutch investment group the largest external investor in the homegrown online travel aggregator and earns it a 15% stake and a board seat. This was also its first foray into a publicly listed Indian company.

It’s a rare occurrence given that private-equity and venture-capital firms typically invest in private companies and pocket gains through secondary sales or their public listing. What’s not rare, though, is Prosus’ love for Indian travel-tech firms.

Back in 2010, Prosus, then called Naspers, investedMedianamaNaspers Invested Over $10 mln In Ibibo In FY10 in the online travel firm Goibibo. By February 2016, Naspers owned as much as 90% stake in Goibibo. Later that year, market leader Makemytrip acquired the company, and three years later, Naspers exited through an equity-swap deal with the Chinese travel agency Ctrip.com.

Years later, Prosus has taken an interest in the travel-tech space again—thanks to an outlier like Ixigo.

The 18-year-old company has been on a tear, growing its revenue by over 8X to Rs 914 crore in the five years to FY25. In the latest earnings callBSE Earnings call transcript, Ixigo said it’s been growing faster than the market for at least five quarters.

Ixigo was not always the travel aggregator it is now. Like the Ship of Theseus, it’s been rebuilt, piece by piece—first a search tool, then an information curator, now a full-fledged booking platform. Its CEO and managing director, Aloke Bajpai, doesn’t mind the comparison; after all, the ship is sailing.

“We didn’t even call ourselves an online travel aggregator for most of the time we existed,” Bajpai told The Ken on a late-night phone call from Abu Dhabi. Despite that, industry stakeholders believe Ixigo has what it takes to climb the ladder in travel aggregation.

The problem, though, is that travel-tech is a segment that has fewer investors, courtesy of the challenges the model comes with, according to Adarsh Menon, partner at early-stage venture fund Fireside Ventures.