Adani Enterprises Limited (AEL) is all set to acquire the online train booking and information platform Trainman via its wholly-owned subsidiary Adani Digital Labs.
The board at AEL has informed that its wholly owned subsidiary, Adani Digital Labs Pvt Ltd has signed a Share Purchase Agreement (SPA) in relation to its proposed acquisition of 100% equity shares in Trainman (Stark Enterprises Pvt Ltd), document filed with the National Stock Exchange (NSE) shows.
The Gurugram-based train ticket booking platform, Trainman was founded by IIT Roorkee graduates Vineet Chirania and Karan Kumar. As per its website, it has over 8 million app downloads and claims to have more than 1 million train ticket booking.
Trainman has raised around $1.15 million (~Rs 9 crore) to date from Goodwater Capital, Hem Angels, Ivy Growth Associates and more. In its last funding round in July 2022, it raised around $1 million funds at a post-money valuation of $10 million (~Rs 80 crore).
During FY22, Trainman’s revenue from operations jumped 2X to Rs 2.53 crore as compared to Rs 1.23 crore in FY21. As per its annual financial statements with the RoC, the company’s losses shot up 5.8X to Rs 1.22 crore in FY22 from Rs 21 lakh in the preceding fiscal year.
Aiming towards its super app, Adani Group launched Adani One for flight ticket and cab booking in Dec last year. In Oct 2021, the group acquired a minority stake in Flipkart-owned travel app ClearTrip.
The acquisition of Trainman seems like a step forward for Adani Group in its digital journey and giving it a foothold in the travel space.
In February 2021, Confirmtkt, one of the competitors of Trainman, was acquired by travel tech company ixigo.