Bus ticket booking portal, Redbus might get acquired by South Africa-based Naspers at around $100 million. Naspers is in talks with RedBus to acquire a stake in the online venture as per highly placed sources, reports TOI. We have tried reaching co-founder of the venture Phanindra Sama and CMO LK Gupta but there have been no response from them till the time of filing the story.

"They have a dominant leadership in online bus ticketing which is a tougher game of aggregation (compared to air travel ticketing). In the internet world, the winner takes it all," said Deepak Srinath of Allegro Capital, who advises digital enterprises on fund raising.

Alok Mittal, MD, Canaan Partners, a US-based venture capital fund, said that online bus ticketing space may not allow for multiple players to scale up. "Keeping in mind the low margins, and inventory availability being limited, there are quite a few challenges to growth. Consolidation is imminent in this space," Mittal said.

RedBus.in was founded in 2006 and was self-funded by Phanindra Sama, Charan Padmaraju and Sudhakar Pasupunuri. The company raised its first capital in 2007 from Seedfund Advisors, an early stage investor and their second investment in 2009 from Seedfund, Helion and Inventus Capital. RedBus today has 400 employees and 18 offices spread across India. The existing investors may exit fully or partly in the latest deal. Currently, the portal claims to issue 10 million tickets with gross sales nearing $200 million annually.