Flipkart to buy stake in ticketing platform BookMyShow

Indian e-commerce major Flipkart is in talks with movie and event ticket booking platform BookMyShow for a strategic partnership to build out its services and transaction offering against Paytm.

The online retailer wants to invest fresh capital into BookMyShow as well as buy shares from some of its investors, reported Mint.

A partnership with market leader BookMyShow will give Flipkart a play in the ticketing market and a more frequent use case for it's service to customers.

Paytm's too has been building its armour in a similar direction through its recent buy of deals and discovery platforms Little and Nearbuy as also its talks with travel platform Via.com

Reliance Industries-owned Network18 is the single largest shareholder in Bigtree Entertainment Pvt. Ltd-owned BookMyShow with a 39 per cent stake.

Besides Network18, which had made an exit from food and restaurant recommendation platform Burrp by selling it BookMyShow in an all-cash deal, SAIF Partners and Accel India have also invested in ticketing company. Accel partner is also an investor in Flipkart.

BookMyShow had raised Rs 550 crore last year led by Stripes Group in a deal which valued it at over Rs 3,000 crore.

The Mumbai-based company has been steadily building its local language content for both its video and audio platforms to penetrate better in tier 2 and 3 cities, a move that will prove to be vastly beneficial for Flipkart given its attempts to serve deeper in the smaller towns.

BookMyShow, which acquired on-demand audio and video platform Nfusion for an undisclosed amount in an all-cash-deal, was also in talks with Facebook-owned WhatsApp for payments and commerce through the instant messaging platform.

Having raised nearly $3 billion in two tranches this year from SoftBank Group, Tencent Holdings, and others, Flipkart plans to pursue more M&A deals. Last month, it bought mobile repair shop chain F1 Info Solutions for an undisclosed amount.

Since its launch, Flipkart has so far invested in 20 companies, of which Myntra being the largest acquisition for more than $330 million in May 2014. In August 2017, it acquired eBay India and the Bengaluru-based etailer was also in talks of acquiring struggling Snapdeal, however, the deal couldn't be materialised.

BookMyShow: Website