NEW DELHI: South African media conglomerate Naspers , an early backer of India’s largest ecommerce company Flipkart , has invested $250 million (about Rs 1,716 crore) in Gurgaon-headquartered online travel venture Ibibo Group.Post this latest round of investment, Naspers will hold about a 90% stake in the nine year-old company, which competes with not only other online travel aggregators, such as Nasdaq-listed MakeMyTrip.com, ClearTrip.com and Yatra.com , but also younger, richly-capitalised ventures, such as online hotels aggregator OYO Rooms and Stayzilla The other stakeholders in Ibibo Group are Chinese internet giant Tencent and Ashish Kashyap , founder and chief executive of the company. Tencent, however, has not participated in the latest round of funding.The investment in Ibibo Group is a significant one for Naspers, which had first invested in Bengaluru-based Flipkart in August 2012, and has pumped in a total of about $495.5 million till date.“The Indian ecommerce market, and the online travel segment in particular, offers exciting growth prospects for us as a group. With a talented, proven management team and exceptional technology, Ibibo is well positioned to benefit from an increasing number of people using online travel services going forward,” said Bob van Dijk , Nasper Group chief executive, in a statement.But Naspers, which was one of the first big strategic investors to enter the Indian market and back the country’s startups, has refrained from participating in the online retailer’s latter rounds that have seen it’s valuation zoom up to $15 billion.In June last year, the South African investor diluted its stake in Flipkart to 15.83% from 16.6% on a fully diluted basis, for a net gain of 1.5 billion rand (around $130.4 million at December exchange rates).“With this investment, I think it’s pretty clear that Naspers has decided to focus on Ibibo, than anyone else in India. They’ve been liquidating their position in Flipkart for some time now,” said an investment banker on the condition of anonymity.While the exact terms of the investment were not disclosed, including the latest round, Naspers and Tencent have invested between $350-$400 million in Ibibo Group till date, with the bulk of the money coming from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed, multinational media group.“This is the single most significant investment made by Naspers in Ibibo, and having practically been in stealth mode over the past two years, while executing both, organic and inorganic growth, we see a massive opportunity in the space,” Kashyap told ET.The investment also comes a little over a month after Deep Kalra-led MakeMyTrip announced that it had raised $180 million (Rs 1,235.4 crore) from Chinese online travel major CTrip.com , a transaction, which has been made via five-year convertible bonds, and which will, upon conversion, see the Chinese major own about 15%-16% of MakeMyTrip.“It’s a challenging space. There is going to be a shakeup, and fair amount of consolidation. Unless the companies can create a niche for themselves, it’s going to be difficult to survive,” said Sanjeev Krishan, leader - Transaction Advisory Services, PricewaterhouseCoopers India.Ibibo, which acquired online bus services redBus for about $100 million in 2013, will use the proceeds to penetrating further into the hotels segment, as well as to further build its technology platform.“We’re the number one in the hotels segment, and have about 45,000 hotels on our platform. We want to bring that number up to 100,000 by then of the next fiscal,” Kashyap said.According to him, the company will also be augmenting its technology team and increase its focus on its mobile strategy.“There’s a lot of work that has to be done, as we look to enter untapped markets,” said Kashyap.Apart from Naspers, Ibibo has also acquired online bus tracking and analytics platform, YourBus.in for an undisclosed sum in March 2014, while in August last year, it picked up a minority stake in cloud-based hotel services startup Djubo, also for an undisclosed amount.