Lastminute windfall for internet pair

TWO entrepreneurs have landed a rare internet fortune as most other former webmeisters reminisce about what might have been.

Vimal, 52, and Gill Khosla, 50, could gross almost £8m after selling their south London-based air ticket site Travelselect.com group to high-profile rival lastminute.com for a deal worth up to £12m. Lastminute has agreed to pay an initial £9m in shares for the Khoslas' business, with a further £3m in 12 months if Travelselect meets performance targets.

That could eventually value Vimal's 55% stake in the business at £6.6m, but he is locked into most of his new stake in lastminute for a year. He also takes a seat on the lastminute.com board alongside the group's co-founders Martha Lane Fox and Brent Hoberman. The deal values Gill Khosla's 11% in Travelselect.com at up to £1.3m.

Lastminute finance director David Howell said the purchase would triple lastminute.com's annual sales of airline tickets. Travelselect sold 200,000 tickets last year and made a pre-tax loss of £3.3m on sales of £38.2m in the year to 31 January.

Vimal started the business 19 years ago after working for Air India in 1971 and studying computing at Kingston University.

The loser in today's deal is Benetton-backed Italian private equity group 21 investimenti, which bought 10% in Travelselect.com at the height of the internet boom in April 2000 for $5m (£3.49m). Its stake is now worth £1.2m.