MAKEMYTRIP

Deep Kalra was working at ABN AMRO bank in Delhi when he noticed a problem. Non-resident Indians in the US spent hours on the phone trying to book flights home to India.

The process was terrible. Travel agents charged high commissions.

Prices were opaque. Booking was slow.

In 2000, Kalra quit his banking job and started MakeMyTrip in a small office in New York City, specifically to serve the Indian diaspora with affordable flights to India. The timing was brutal.

The company launched just before the dot-com bust and then 9/11 devastated the travel industry.

Kalra kept the company alive by cutting costs and focusing on a niche, NRI travel, that larger players ignored. By 2005, the company moved its focus to domestic travel within India and shifted headquarters to Delhi.

MakeMyTrip is an online travel agency (OTA). It makes money from commissions on flights, hotels, buses, trains, and holiday packages booked through its platform.

Customers search, compare, and book travel on the website or app. Hotels and airlines pay MakeMyTrip a commission for each booking.

The company also runs Goibibo and redBus, which it acquired. Goibibo is a budget-focused travel platform, and redBus is India's largest online bus ticketing service.

Together, the three brands cover almost every travel price point in India.

The MakeMyTrip app is the primary product. It handles flights, hotels, buses, trains, cab rentals, and holiday packages.

The app serves over 50 million monthly users.

Goibibo is the value brand, targeting budget travelers with the lowest prices and frequent cashback offers.

redBus is the bus ticketing platform, serving over 2,500 bus operators across India, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Colombia, and Peru. It sells 20+ million bus tickets per quarter.

myBiz is the corporate travel product, competing with SAP Concur and TripActions for business travel management in India.

MakeMyTrip grew by consolidating India's fragmented online travel market. The key acquisitions were Goibibo in 2016 (merged with via a share swap with Ibibo Group) and redBus (India's bus ticketing monopoly).

After these acquisitions, MakeMyTrip controlled roughly 60% of India's online hotel bookings.

The mobile-first pivot was critical. India skipped the desktop internet era and went straight to smartphones.

MakeMyTrip redesigned everything for mobile, and the app became the default travel tool for hundreds of millions of Indians.

Ctrip (now Trip.com Group) invested $180 million in MakeMyTrip, giving it a Chinese strategic partner and access to inbound Chinese tourist traffic.

Profitability has been elusive. For years, MakeMyTrip burned cash on discounts and cashbacks to acquire customers in a market where price sensitivity is extreme.

Indian travelers will switch apps for a $2 difference in price.

Competition from Google, which offers direct flight and hotel search, is a structural threat. If Google decides to handle bookings directly instead of sending traffic to OTAs, MakeMyTrip's distribution advantage erodes.

COVID nearly killed the business. Travel bookings went to zero in March 2020.

The company survived by cutting 350 jobs and raising emergency capital.

MakeMyTrip went public on NASDAQ in 2010, one of the first Indian internet companies to list in the US. Key investors include Trip.com Group (formerly Ctrip), which holds a significant stake, and various institutional investors.

Earlier investors included SAIF Partners, Tiger Global, and Helion Ventures.