Increasing number of Indians are now booking tickets and hotels online. According to IAMAI e-commerce report (2013), travel accounts for 71% of e-commerce business in India. A company that holds a major share in the Indian online travel industry is MakeMyTrip. Since year 2000, MakeMyTrip is helping millions of Indians book railway, airlines and bus tickets, book hotels and buy holiday packages online. While today turning to MakeMyTrip has become a habit for many when it comes to travelling, lets have a look at some interesting facts and figures about the company.
MakeMyTrip Highlights
| Startup Name | MakeMyTrip |
|---|---|
| Headquarter | Gurugram |
| Founder | Deep Kalra |
| Sector | Travel tech |
| Founded | 2000 |
| Parent Organization | MakeMyTrip Limited |
| Website | makemytrip.com |
About MakeMyTrip
MakeMyTrip - Vision & Mission
MakeMyTrip - Product and Services
MakeMyTrip - History / How it was Started
How was MakeMyTrip Started
MakeMyTrip - Funding and Investors
MakeMyTrip - Business Model & Revenue Model
MakeMyTrip - Awards
MakeMyTrip - Acquisitions & Mergers
MakeMyTrip - Startup Challenges
MakeMyTrip - Competitors
MakeMyTrip - Growth / Revenue
MakeMyTrip - Founder’s Advice
About MakeMyTrip
India’s leading online travel company MakeMyTrip.com (Parent company MakeMyTrip Limited)  was founded in the year 2000 by Deep Kalra. Headquartered in Gurugram, Haryana, the company provides online travel services including flight tickets, domestic and international holiday packages, hotel reservations, rail and bus tickets.
As of March 31, 2018, the Company has 14 company-owned travel stores in 14 cities, including one in their office in Gurugram, over 30 franchisee-owned travel stores which primarily sell packages in approximately 28 cities, and counters in four major airports in India under MakeMyTrip brand. MakeMyTrip also have offices in New York, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Phuket, Bangkok, and Dubai.
MakeMyTrip - Vision & Mission
MakeMyTrip’s mission is to provide customers a one stop shop for all their travel needs. It aims to give the best possible user experience across their entire travel journey, which includes effective planning resources, superior booking experience across all channels and in journey 24x7 live customer support.
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MakeMyTrip - Product and Services
MakeMyTrip’s services include air ticketing, hotel and alternative accommodations bookings, holiday planning and packaging, rail ticketing, intercity bus ticketing, car hire and ancillary travel requirements such as facilitating access to third-party travel insurance and visa processing. The Company’s culture of continuous innovation and “customer first” strategic focus in India’s travel market has allowed them to be the clear leader in the industry and positions them to accelerate the predominately offline hotels and accommodations market online. They have a pretty large team of data scientists. They are using chatbots extensively—Gia for Goibibo and Myra for MakeMyTrip. This covers quite a bit of post sales queries and will also start dabbling in sales. MakeMyTrip also forayed into the corporate travel segment through MyBiz
Founders of MakeMyTrip and team
MakeMyTrip founder  Deep Kalra was born in Hyderabad and studied in Delhi and Ahmedabad. He obtained his bachelor's degree in Economics from St. Stephen's College, Delhi in 1990 and his MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad in 1992. Kalra joined ABN AMRO straight out of IIM Ahmedabad where he worked for three years before taking a year long break. He worked with AMF Bowling to set up bowling alleys in India before joining GE Capital in 1999 as VP of Business Development. As the CEO of MakeMyTrip, Deep Kalra guided MakeMyTrip from its inception till its listing on NASDAQ in August 2010. Since August 2013, till February 2020, Kalra functioned as Group CEO of MakeMyTrip. In February 2020, Deep Kalra stepped down from the post of Group CEO to resume responsibilities as Executive Chairman of the MakeMyTrip board, while co-founder and current CEO Rajesh Magow took charge as the Group CEO.
“We believe that separating the roles of Group CEO and Executive Chairman will allow us to focus more on long-term strategic opportunities within and outside India, while maintaining our market-leading position in our existing businesses,” MakeMyTrip owner Deep Kalra said commenting on his step-down
Kalra also serves as the Vice Chairman of Internet and Mobile Association of India. He is one of the founders of Ashoka University, and is a part of its governing body. He is also a founding member of I am Gurgaon, an NGO.
MakeMyTrip co-founder and CEO Rajesh Magow, is an alumnus of Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. Magow served as Regional Head - ACE North at Aptech Ltd and CFO/Head of Financial Services at Ebookers prior to joining MakeMyTrip in 2006.
Read more: Startups in Hyderabad
MakeMyTrip - History / How it was Started
The idea for starting MakeMyTrip erupted while Deep Kalra found himself wondering about the endless possibilities of the internet while trying to sell his wife's car online. While booking a holiday to Thailand, he realized that the internet could offer more competitive prices by cutting out the middleman. Prompted by this thought, Deep founded MakeMyTrip.
MakeMyTrip - Funding and Investors
MakeMyTrip raised their first Series A funding of $10 million in 2005. Then they raised another funding of $13 million in 2006. And then again, $15 million in 2007, a Series C funding. However, in 2016, the company launched their IPO. They received $180 million. Later, they launched another IPO in which they raised $330 million. It was in 2017 and the company had no other funding activity since then.
To total, MakeMyTrip raised funding worth $548 Million over 5 rounds.
| Date | Stage | Amount | Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| May,2005 | Series A | $10 Million | Tiger Fund, Helion Venture Partners, Sierra Ventures & SAIF Partners |
| December,2006 | Series B | $13 Million | Helion Venture Partners, Sierra Ventures, SAIF Partners |
| October,2007 | Series C | $15 Million | Tiger Fund, Helion Venture Partners, Sierra Ventures, SAIF Partners |
| Januray, 2016 | Post-IPO Equity | $180 Million | Ctrip |
| March,2017 | Post-IPO Equity | $330 Million | Ctrip & Prosus & Naspers |
MakeMyTrip - Business Model & Revenue Model
MakeMyTrip lets the users book air tickets, bus tickets, buy holiday packages, book hotels and accommodations and hire car. Through MakeMyTrip, users can also access other travel related services provided by third party vendors like visa processing and travel insurance. All these services are available through the MakeMyTrip App, website or through MakeMyTrip owned and franchise stores. Besides, this B2C model, MakeMyTrip has also introduced MyBiz, to offer various corporate travel related services. MyBiz lets businesses manage the travel and accommodation of its employees easily through various features such as a single dashboard, MyBiz wallet for central payment processing and Instant Refunds to myBiz Wallet on Cancellations etc.
MakeMyTrip’s revenues are currently split almost equally between ticketing and tours and hotel bookings. Hotels and packages, a higher margin category compared with airline ticketing, is the biggest revenue contributor and account for 56 percent of net revenue. The company is the market leader in domestic flight ticketing with a 24 percent market share.
Read more: This is the revenue model of Mobikwik
MakeMyTrip - Awards
The list of accolades received by MakeMyTrip is quite a long one. Here are some of them-
- Best Travel Innovator - Travel Distribution World Asia Awards (2012)
- Singapore Airlines - Top agents award (2010-2011) ; Top Passenger Agent (2007-08)
- Malaysia airlines - Top Agent Award (2007) ; Top agent award (2009) ; Top agent award (2010)
- Cathay Pacific - Outstanding performance in (2009) ; Outstanding Performance (2007)
- Air Canada - Outstanding Performance (2008)
- Air Mauritius - All India Top Ten Agent/Top North India Sales Award (2007-08) ; All India Top Ten Agent/Top North India Sales Award (2006-07)
- British Airways - Outstanding Revenue Contribution (2007-08)
- Lufthansa - Outstanding Performance (2006-07)
- Indian Airlines - Achieving Highest Domestic Passenger Sales (2006-07)
- Kingfisher Airlines - Outstanding Performance (2006-07)
- Jet Airways - Award of Excellence (2005-06)
- Air India - Outstanding Contribution to Passenger Sales (2005-06)
MakeMyTrip - Acquisitions & Mergers
MakeMyTrip made three acquisitions, namely, Luxury Tours and Travel Private Limited (Singapore), Thailand's ITC Group, Hotel Travel Group and ETB Group, over the years, to enter new markets in South – East Asian region and Europe.
In August 2011, MakeMyTrip (MMT) Â along with private equity firm Saif Partners acquired majority stakes in Travenues Technology Private Limited which owns Ixigo.com.
In November 2011, MMT invested in budget lodging and hotel operator, 'My Guest House Accommodation'
In September 2014, MakeMyTrip instituted a $15 million innovation fund to support early-stage companies in the travel space. MakeMyTrip acquired MyGola, a travel planning website in April 2015. The acquisition was done through the innovation fund and as part of the acquisition, all employees of MyGola were absorbed into the MakeMyTrip team.
In June 2015, MakeMyTrip acquired 18% stake in travel planning startup Inspirock.
In July 2015, MakeMyTrip invested in travel information and hotel review portal, HolidayIQ to pick up approximately 30% stake in the company. In the same month, it also invested $5 million in BonaVita Technologies, a start-up which plans to utilize the funds to build innovative products in the travel industry.
In 2016, MakeMyTrip Ltd agreed to buy Ibibo Group’s travel business in India in an all-stock deal, creating the country’s largest online travel firm which, according to a note by Morgan Stanley, is worth $1.8 billion.
MakeMyTrip - Startup Challenges
Speaking about the biggest challenge faced by MakeMyTrip, Kalra quoted, “The meltdown of dotcom, the exit of venture capital from India, and the 9/11 attacks. By mid-2001, MakeMyTrip were hit by this triple whammy. The next couple of years were the toughest — there were no investors in sight and the company had to shrink the team. But those tough times helped bind the team together. It’s been an incredible journey and the team are thrilled for the possibilities that lie ahead.”
MakeMyTrip - Competitors
Below are the 3 main MakeMyTrip competitors:
- Oyo
- Yatra
- Cleartrip
MakeMyTrip - Growth / Revenue
MakeMyTrip is a unicorn company with high net worth. The company is focusing on technology and data to make the customer experience more personalized and focused.The NASDAQ listed company, saw net revenues from the hotel business surge by almost 140% to $81.2 million in the first quarter of FY 2017-18.
For the quarter ending 30th September 2019, MakeMyTrip reported revenue worth $118 Million. Â In the third quarter of FY 2019-2020, MakeMyTrip's revenue increased from $118 Million in Q2 to $146.9 Million. Thus, the company's revenue increased by 15.9% YOY to 146.9 Million from $124.8 Million in Quarter 3 of FY 2018-2019.
Again, as of now the company's losses has come down by 50% till Q3 of FY 2019-2020 as compared to Q3 of FY 2018-2019.
“We can turn profitable, but that will hit our growth. At this stage of the market, you cannot afford to go slow.”- Deep Kalra
Read more: What are the major challenges Jugnoo faced as a Startup
MakeMyTrip - Founder’s Advice
“I think we are in a really good space where travel is really booming and most of it is moving online. What's exciting is how do we capture the mind set of this Indian who has moved online recently and who is keen to travel, and we want to be the brand that they trust instinctively and take care of them. And the vision I’ve always had is to get all our customers to become our brand ambassadors. And we keep moving in that direction and it's more important to have people come back to you unaided. And that is what we are excited about,” Kalra shares.
