makemytrip: MakeMyTrip wants to be India’s super travel app | Tech US News

Superapp is the buzzword among conglomerates. From Tatas to Adanis, working to develop a one-stop solution for its customers, the country’s largest online travel portal, MakeMyTrip wants to become a super travel app.

With COVID behind us and travel showing an upswing, MakeMyTrip is adding multiple products in a single app through in-house development and also by acquiring companies.

“The ambition is to become the first port of call for anyone in India thinking of travelling. For this we are adding more products and services. So starting from air travel to rail to hotel booking, airport transfer or change of currency, if you see the app now, it’s clearly evolving into a one-stop shop for every travel use,” said group co-founder and CEO Rajesh Magow.

The NASDAQ-listed company over the past two years has been adding various travel assistance services that may not be a big profit driver, but are driving new users to the app.

“Entry into new and related segments contributed more than ten percent to the company’s top line and Magow believes it will increase up to 25 percent of the company’s revenue.

For example, the company’s fintech arm TripMoney acquired a majority stake in online foreign currency exchange service provider BookMyForex in April. TripMoney also sells other financial products such as travel loans and insurance.

The online company has also been making investments to increase the number of distribution channels. In the last three to four years, MakeMyTrip has been tapping into new demand segments: there is a business travel product for corporates, Mybiz for small and medium enterprises, Quest2Travel for corporates. The company also recently built MyPartner, a B2B travel agency platform.

Magow said the decision to enter the corporate travel segment was driven by the fact that the segment was largely fragmented without any institutional backup. “We must think of the large corporations that there was a lack of transparency, everything was opaque. So we thought it was an opportunity. GST has also boosted the cause and due to our strong technology backend, we have built a system where credit and receipt of GST happens automatically,” Magow said. The company now has more than 200 large companies as clients, including chip PSU companies blue like Indian Oil.

The company has also diversified its offerings in the hotel segment and recently entered the alternative hospitality space. “During Covid, this growing trend of preferring alternative accommodation such as villas, apartments, family homes and we took the decision to expand into that segment. Today we sell almost 45,000 properties in 1,100 destinations,” Magow said. In addition, the application has listed properties of super premium segments.