MakeMyTrip's Road to Success : Deep Kalra, Founder CEO
Deep Kalra, Founder CEO
MakeMyTrip.comThere was a time when Indian families would plan their annual trip six months in advance, after spending long, sweaty hours queuing up in front of ticket booths. It sure wasn’t easy.
But in 2005, Deep Kalra, CEO and founder of MakeMyTrip.com, changed all that. He brought the concept of Online Travel Agents (OTA) to India and revolutionized the way the Indian middle class travels and plans their vacation.
Today, the rise of Internet credibility coupled with falling rates of air travel has helped OTAs catapult to glorious success. And with a turnover of Rs 2,200 crore, MakeMyTrip.com has been a pioneer in the OTA success story. With over 50 percent market share, it’s the single most recognized and trusted player in the OTA industry.
Interview Questions
- Q.In a cut-throat industry like OTA, how do you maintain competitive advantage?
- Q.But are these advantages sustainable? Couldn’t they be replicated by your competitors?
- Q.How are you taking on the competition from OTAs who offer lower prices?
- Q.What’s behind your advertising strategy?
- Q.What’s the revenue breakup between your businesses?
- Q.But today travelers can get the lowest fares on an airline’s site itself…
- Q.What’s changed in the industry since the slowdown?
- Q.So, what’s been your most valuable lesson?
- Q.Does India’s low Internet penetration bother you?
- Q.Is it possible for any online company to stay solely online in India?
- Q.How crucial is the role of the CIO in the OTA space?
- Q.Do you use IT to monitor how your fares stack up against your competitors?
- Q.What does the future of the OTA industry in India look like?
Full Interview with Deep Kalra, Founder CEO
Creating an experience for the customer is very important. Every OTA player today is focusing on providing more value for the customer’s time and money.
The focus this year for MakeMyTrip is to move beyond customer satisfaction and towards creating customer delight. Also, we take pride in our customer relations; we have customer testimonials that speak very highly of our customer care executives.
Being ahead on the technology curve is what gives us an edge. It’s very important to keep on upgrading and reinventing new processes to enhance customer experience.
The same holds true for our suppliers. We always strive to provide them with the best environment to showcase their products. Since we are an intermediary, it’s critical that we add value to both our crucial stakeholders.
The basic service offered by any OTA player remains the same across the industry, but it’s the experience that creates the difference in the minds of the customers. Our customers come to us because of the unparalleled experience that we provide.
Our edge is clearly our expertise in innovation. Any technological development can be replicated, but being an industry leader, we have always managed to be the first to offer unique services. Of course, often these services are then offered by other players in the industry.
Customer experience is another advantage and we achieve this with our robust customer satisfaction measurement process and training. As the saying goes, the devil is in the details and that is especially true in
our industry.
It’s the cumulative effect of those seemingly small innovative tweaks to enhance customer experience that makes all the difference between a repeat customer and a
lost opportunity.
We still offer the lowest prices for most flights across sectors. But it’s not just low fares that bring customers back to our site. The fact that we offer value added services is the driving force that directs so many customers to our website.
It’s very important to establish the brand. For us, the focus is not just to provide cheap tickets. Advertising helps in getting your message across to the target audience more effectively. And with more and more players entering the segment, it is necessary to advertise to ensure you have captured sufficient mind-share. Again, the product basket that we offer is growing and our customers have to be updated accordingly.
Between hotel and air, air captures a much higher percentage — two-thirds — of our business. But other product lines are growing fast, especially hotels and buses. The effort is to reduce reliance on a single line of business. While we lead the sector in terms of air tickets, we are continuously focusing on non-air products to increase their share of revenue as well.
The advantage that MakeMyTrip offers is that it lists all available options at a glance. The customer thus saves valuable time. The whole existence of any travel agent depends on value customer services that we offer. Also, customers can avail special offers and other discounts on MakeMyTrip itself. We run joint promotions with various financial and banking organizations on an ongoing basis to create valued propositions for more of our customers.
The effects of the slowdown are gradually reducing. People have started traveling again for business and pleasure. Most airlines have reported profits in the last quarter, indicating that travel trends are improving. We expect some consolidation among travel players. Technology will play a major role in differentiating the leaders of tomorrow.
The industry has learnt to expand capacity with caution, especially because the sector is capex hungry for the suppliers. We, at MakeMyTrip, have learnt that our suppliers are very important. Unless we make sure our suppliers’ business is profitable, we won’t be profitable.
This can be perceived as a challenge or an opportunity. We are constantly reinventing ourselves to offer maximum convenience and ease to our customers. We do realize that a large number of Internet users access our site through a dial-up connection and there are always low bandwidth issues. We have designed our website to suit these requirements. Surely, an increase in Internet penetration will help in the growth of OTA industry.
Our stores are an extension of our online presence. The stores exist to provide further convenience to our customers.WORLDAlso, this is our effort in fighting the challenge of low Internet penetration in the country. Indians are not yet comfortable buying holiday packages online so the brick-and-mortar presence is essential for communicating our holiday packages. This requires the services of a counselor who can advice the customer and redress queries and concerns immediately.
It’s a critical position as technology is vital to our success. Our CTO is an integral member of the leadership team at MakeMyTrip.
We use international IT platforms like Amadeus (a global travel distribution system) for stacking fares of different airlines. This provides customers the ease of viewing all options at one go. We keep a very close watch on market dynamics so we do real-time shop analysis to ensure that we are always competitive.
Consolidation, dynamic packaging, offering more for less and creating a memorable experience will be the focus areas going forward
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