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How Ixigo Won India's Travel Market | Aloke Bajpai (Ixigo)
120 Plays4 years ago
"Why can't we all just work without salary for a few months?"
Imagine facing near-certain bankruptcy during the 2008 financial crisis, only to have your team propose this solution. Aloke Bajpai shares the incredible story of how Ixigo's team rallied, taking pay cuts (with founders taking none), extending their runway, and ultimately surviving to become a market leader. It’s a powerful testament to building a strong company culture and the importance of transparency during adversity.
About the Guest:
Aloke Bajpai is the Co-founder & Group CEO of Ixigo, India's largest Online Travel Aggregator (OTA) by active users and app downloads, and the 2nd largest by revenue. An alumnus of IIT Kanpur and INSEAD, Aloke bootstrapped Ixigo for its first 5 years with less than $1 million, navigating multiple near-death experiences to build a leading travel platform focused on the 'Next Billion Users' in India.
Key Insights from the Conversation:
- Early Sparks: How growing up in multicultural Kenya and an early fascination with computers shaped his journey.
- The "Swades" Moment: How the movie Swades and Steve Jobs' Stanford speech inspired his return to India and entrepreneurial path.
- Pivoting Smart: Shifting from an initial B2B SaaS idea to a B2C metasearch model to tap into India's growing internet user base.
- Frugality as a Moat: Why operating leanly was crucial for survival and became a core part of Ixigo's DNA.
- Blue Ocean Thinking: Focusing relentlessly on customer needs rather than competition to build a unique product and brand.
- Resilience & Team: Overcoming the 2008 crisis through transparency and incredible team commitment.
- Unconventional Growth: Achieving significant user growth with minimal marketing spend, relying on SEO, product innovation, and early adoption of social media.
Chapters (Evenly Spaced):
- 0:00:00 - Inspiration: Swades & Steve Jobs' 2005 Speech
- 0:05:10 - Growing Up in Kenya & Falling in Love with Computers
- 0:10:20 - Return to India & The IIT Kanpur Experience
- 0:15:30 - First Job at Amadeus: Life on the French Riviera
- 0:20:40 - Why an MBA? The INSEAD Experience & Asia Focus
- 0:25:50 - Ixigo Genesis: From B2B Idea to B2C Metasearch
- 0:31:00 - Early Funding: Struggles, Angels & the First Seed Cheque
- 0:36:10 - Surviving the 2008 Crisis: Transparency & Team Sacrifice
- 0:41:20 - Monetization & Frugal Growth Hacks
- 0:46:30 - Ixigo's Secret Sauce: Customer Focus & Blue Ocean Strategy
- 0:51:40 - The Long Game: IPO Ambitions?
- 0:56:50 - Aloke's "Ikigai": Building a Lasting Legacy
Hashtags:
#Ixigo #AlokeBajpai #FounderThesis #IndianStartups #TravelTech #OnlineTravel #OTA #StartupIndia #Entrepreneurship #Bootstrapping #IITKanpur #INSEAD #StartupJourney #BusinessPodcast #TechIndia #MakeInIndia #DigitalIndia #TravelIndustry #StartupFunding #VentureCapital #CompanyCulture #Resilience #CustomerFocus #MarketingStrategy #Frugality #Podcast
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Transcript
Introduction to Founder Thesis Podcast
00:00:04
Speaker
You are listening to an HD Smartcast original.
00:00:24
Speaker
Hi, I'm Akshay. Hi, this is Aurob. And you are listening to the Founder Thesis Podcast. We meet some of the most celebrated charter founders in the country. And we want to learn how to build a unicorn.
Career Inspiration: Choosing India Over Abroad
00:00:40
Speaker
In 2005, two seminal events happened. One was there was a movie called Swades launched at the end of 2004, which I watched I think January or February 2005. Kind of run the bail inside me because you know the story was really about somebody who has already achieved everything in life outside of India and wants to come back home.
00:00:58
Speaker
To me, it sounded like, you know, that's my story and I really should be going back now to contribute with my skill set in my own country rather than thinking of a job abroad. And this was the time when I was interviewing. So actually, after watching Suresh, I did not do a few interviews because I thought, you know, if I have to move back to India, I might as well focus on jobs there. Second thing was the Steve Jobs commencement speech, which I think also happened. I guess it was April or May, 2005 as well.
00:01:24
Speaker
Now, I know that most of our travel plans took a hit because of, you know, COVID-19, but there is no harm in planning your forthcoming trips and daydreaming about them because I know how much you hate your job. Just kidding. However, what I'm not joking about is you planning your forthcoming trips. And if there's one website that every millennial should be acquainted with, it's none other than Ixigo.
Alok Bajpai's Journey to Founding Ixigo
00:01:47
Speaker
The founder of Ixigok, Alok Bajpai, has had a very colorful journey, starting with spending his childhood in Kenya, pursuing engineering from an IIT and living the dream of working in a global tech company. He's done it all. But he couldn't stay away from his country, all from following his passion. And he spent 11 years in making Ixigok, the leading platform for all Indian travelers. Listen to this candid conversation between Akshay and Alok about what it takes to build an online business in a frugal manner.
00:02:17
Speaker
Hi, I'm Alok Bajpai. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Exego, India's leading AI-based travel app. What was it like to grow up in Kenya? How was that experience like? And did it change your worldview, so to say, like from moving? How old were you when you moved from India to Kenya? I was seven.
00:02:38
Speaker
I think that was a very, for me, that was an age where an age of discovery and an age for learning new things. So I think I owe what I am today a lot to that experience. It was a multicultural place that we were living. Like Mombasa was a small island where multiple ethnicities from around the world, Europeans, Arabs, Africans.
00:03:00
Speaker
Indian South Asian so melting pot for a lot of cultures religion so got very good exposure there from that perspective and also at that young age you know a lot of things to discover in terms of natural you know we did all the game reserves and a lot of natural beauty that exists in Africa so it was
00:03:17
Speaker
one of the moments from childhood i fondly remember a lot of beaches a lot of wildlife and a lot of friends from different nationalities and the best part is you know it was also my first list of computers my dad actually you know saw this poster on uh so at the end of our street where we used to stay there was this new computer institute and this was 1988 right when i was eight this new computer institute had come up called bits and bytes
00:03:41
Speaker
And they had procured a few Apple Macintoshes and they started teaching some people how to use computers, right? And they had this summer program for kids was super expensive, but I think my dad didn't hesitate to, you know, put me into that. My first trusted computers and, you know, I love it first site for me and spent like three to four weeks learning how to use various tools on a Macintosh.
00:04:03
Speaker
I fell in love with the speech sent part back then and also built a few games of my own, I recall. So that was an integral part of my entrepreneurial journey, you know, falling in love with computers at such a young age.
Life in Mombasa vs. India
00:04:16
Speaker
What was Mumbasa like as compared to India? It's a very small island town off the eastern coast of Kenya. So people don't know. But how is it so well off? I mean, for somebody to open an institute with Max means it must be a well off place. So I tell you, the background is that Mumbasa was one of the places where Vasco de Gama landed before he came to India. It's a very historically significant port.
00:04:43
Speaker
for east africa and you know it's always been this trading post where you know right from the british colonial rule till you know europeans coming there for the beaches or whether it's indian traders and settlers there so bank of baroda my dad used to work for uh you know there are a lot of gujratis in in kenya a lot of wealthy businessmen traders and they would all bank with jrati bank which
00:05:04
Speaker
of course, Vancouver, otherwise became a nationalised bank. So that's how my dad ended up there. And the thing is, since it was this tourist hotspot, so obviously it was a little more affluent the rest of the country. And it had a lot of international folks. So international schools, you know, very multicultural society. And I think it was like a commercial hub. Yeah, tourist and commercial hub on the East Coast.
00:05:28
Speaker
Yeah, in Mumbasa.
Academic Influence: IIT Kanpur
00:05:30
Speaker
So you did you do anything besides studying like, you know, in terms of anything entrepreneurial that you recall?
00:05:38
Speaker
Well, I mean, I was a kid, so I was discovering a lot of things. And, you know, one of the fond memories there is that, you know, I won this GK competition in my school. So they actually did this assessment across the whole school. And I came first in it. And why I recall that is that when I got the prize money, my dad asked me, what do you want to do with this? And I said, I want to buy an encyclopedia. I mean, in hindsight, that was a pretty geeky thing to do for a eight year.
00:06:01
Speaker
for an eight-year-old. But I'd heard this cool thing called an encyclopedia, which everybody told me was big and fat, but it had all the world's knowledge in it. Back then, we didn't have Wikipedia, right? So you only had the encyclopedia. So I went and bought this really fat. I still have it, actually, now I'm showing it to my kids just a few days ago. And I think some of that intellectual curiosity came from that exposure I got there and the kind of things you
00:06:29
Speaker
you kind of start asking questions about around you that they really came out and this computer course actually really set me that actually when I came back to India when we came back in 91 I asked my dad if we could buy a computer and he said you know
00:06:43
Speaker
The thing costs a few lakhs, right? I mean, this is 1991. They're not that many computers in the world still. So I couldn't get back to computers till probably 1994, 1993, maybe when it got introduced as a subject in school and every school started having these chilled out computer labs where you couldn't go inside with your shuffles on. So that was, yeah. So I think that.
00:07:05
Speaker
That I think for me played the most critical role in my journey that you know, falling in love with computers at a young age and having that curiosity to build or try new things. So after coming back, how many places did you switch? I assume your dad must be getting transferred every two three years.
00:07:19
Speaker
Actually, once we came back, he ended up being pretty stable in Kanpur and got transferred from one branch to another, of course, but then kind of settled down in Kanpur, which also was a place where all my relatives and all were so grew up there. And my and my dad used to sometimes take over the weekend to, you know, the IIT Kanpur campus and show me that it's such a serene and cool place. Wouldn't you want to be here someday, right? So that's how he kind of started building some integration. How old were you when when he
00:07:48
Speaker
I started doing that when I was probably 12-13 and I didn't really know what happened there in that cool campus but I really like the serenity and the green cover and just the fact that there were lots of geeky looking people riding bicycles and with thick glasses on. By the way, I was somebody who wore glasses from the time I was seven so I was myopic when I was born probably covered when I was six. So I saw a lot of people like me wearing glasses, wearing shuffles and roaming around.
00:08:17
Speaker
It looked like a cool place to be. So I think I was around 15 when I decided that I wanted to be an engineer. So you got through in the first attempt itself? Yes, studied very hard actually. I mean, the last year, I mean, the 12th standard year, I can't recall a single day where I watched TV for like more than 30 minutes. But I don't think I ever went to a movie hall that year. It was a lot of sacrifice and a lot of hard work and study. Sometimes I look back and I say that, you know, I don't think I've ever worked that hard even
00:08:46
Speaker
Even building a startup is not that hard, the amount of studying that you need to do. But I think what I learned from that is if you're passionate about something and you can give it 100%, things do work out. Because I was really passionate about getting into a good college and study very well. Actually, I studied so hard that I studied even for 12 standard with the same rigor. So I got into Bixplany and IIT Kanpur both at the same time and then ended up at IIT Kanpur electrical engineering.
00:09:16
Speaker
And this was all self-study or you were going for classes or something? We did have a few so-called, you know, famous coaching classes in our town. I went to a couple of those, you know, and I also forged a lot of friendships with people there. And many of those guys also made it to IIT Kanpur after that. So that's another interesting kind of guy. I think one of the learning there was if you have like-minded people around, you know, that's the other important
Early Career at Amadeus
00:09:38
Speaker
thing. So.
00:09:38
Speaker
Because people say you're the average of the 10 people or the five people you spend the most time with. And I've seen that's true. So I was a very studious kind of child and geeky kind of.
00:09:53
Speaker
person and ended up you know spending a lot more time with similar people when I was in school but when I went to IIT the game changed because you know first semester itself first quiz you know they used to have these quizzes before the entrance for example the first quiz you know I got a zero in it right and I was like what the hell right how is that possible yeah
00:10:13
Speaker
You've come in, you've got a very good rank at IIT and you're probably the best in your school and you get this shock of your life. Those days, IIT Kanpur was the toughest kind of rigorous academic program, probably still is, but once you realize that everybody around you is equally bright or maybe brighter than you.
00:10:33
Speaker
you kind of start settling down. That's when I started moving a little bit away from just being purely academy-oriented and started spending time on a few hobbies of mine. One of those hobbies was computer science. So I ended up spending probably more time sitting in the computer center, just figuring things out on a first version Linux box, trying to compile the kernel and stuff like that, as opposed to my digital signal processing course books.
00:10:59
Speaker
So, you know, that love with computers kept playing out, even though I was studying electrical engineering, I was more in love with programming.
00:11:07
Speaker
ethical hacking and figuring out how stuff works to the extent today. I mean, some of the ethical hacking was to the extent that we got banned from the computer center a few weeks, me and a few of my friends. But... So, what was the ethical hacking term? Hacking your brother? Hacking your brother, absolutely. Even if you didn't cause harm, if you were found to have broken into a computer, you know you were in trouble.
00:11:36
Speaker
So what's like your fondest memory of those four years? Well, I've made a lot of friends, right? And I think I learned a lot from those friendships. And also, you know, like, till the time you're in school or, you know, you're at home, you have a protective shell around you, you know, in your in your comfort zone. I think when you're on your own in college and, you know, you.
00:11:57
Speaker
you discover all sorts of diverse types of people coming from various backgrounds you know in it that way you know like you had people coming from all straddles of society all states of india you know again a very diverse lot to be with and and you know you couldn't decide who you would end up
00:12:13
Speaker
being wing mates with so you had to live with that bunch right and one friendship with that bunch so i think the learning was you know how to get along with people and building your social and communication skills and forming bonds and friendships which now last a lifetime i mean one of the best friends from IIT is now my co-founder of whom i've known you know now for let me check so 23 years so
00:12:36
Speaker
So I think some of those bonds of friendship and what you learn from those people and individuals is an order of magnitude higher than what you end up learning in the classes. I guess you also must have realized that competing only for academics would be tougher and you decided probably to do better utilization of your time and get a more holistic personality grooming experience.
00:13:00
Speaker
oh yes oh yes totally totally i think the first two semesters you try to compete and then once you get the b's and c's you start giving up right that's the typical kind of curve right so i think i think beyond the second year i wasn't really caring about my grades to be honest and i even failed at one of the classes and failure is also very important to teach you a few things and i think i did buckle up and cover up and bounce back in the third year and and then by the
00:13:28
Speaker
By the fourth year, you're usually in a much more chilled out zone where you know exactly how much you need to study to get a passing grade or at least a C. So I was one of those. I was not really like an eight point or nine point someone. I was actually a seven point someone.
00:13:43
Speaker
No median median in academic but i would spend a lot of time on creative stuff like if there was a robotics competition or something you know i would just find someone in my we wanted to participate with me and try to build out something and whether or not we wanted this matter actually most cases we actually did end up in the top three four but then.
00:14:03
Speaker
you know, it was more about participating and having fun. And then I remember I organized
Transition to Entrepreneurship
00:14:08
Speaker
a lot of activities and I was very participative in all the festivals and the tech festival tech fest that we used to have, Tech Ready and a lot of the clubs, right.
00:14:21
Speaker
So I think the last two years I was actually spending only 30% of my time studying, so to say, 70% of my time really discovering new and cool things. Like one of the cool things we did was me and a bunch of my wingmates actually pulled land cable from
00:14:37
Speaker
the nearest node down to our hostel and and set up the first LAN in our hostel right and this I'm talking about like year 2000 right and it was pretty cool like we went and bought a you a switch or a can't remember it probably all the hubs or switches and did all the wiring ourselves we had a bunch of folks who figured out how to do the IP routing and stuff and bought a few computers and that's the
00:15:02
Speaker
By the way, it took me that many years to convince my dad to buy a computer for me. I was in my third year of college. Third year of college is when I bought a computer of my own until then I was managing the computer center either in school or college. But yeah, I mean, fondest memories include setting up some of those cool things on the IIT land. I mean, being set up the first
00:15:21
Speaker
server that was, I mean, it's illegal, but you know, at that time you would download music from some of the torrents and, you know, set up your own streaming server, which could stream music to everybody in the hostel. And that was a cool thing to do right back in like 20 years ago. Right.
00:15:37
Speaker
So we were doing stuff like that, like a file swapping, file sharing network that works across the hospitals. We did that sort of stuff. I was known to be that sort of stuff. Like if you, I think if you look at my yearbook, they'll say that if you have electrical engineering problems, don't go to a low photograph. You know, practical computer issues is the guy to talk to, right? So then what next? By the time placement season came around, what was happening?
00:16:00
Speaker
So placement season, I actually didn't think too much about it nor plan enough about it. In those days, you just assume that since you're at IT, you'll get a job. So you don't need to worry too much about it. So it wasn't as well planned as what people imagine. Maybe these days they are, but we just sat in every
00:16:18
Speaker
company that came on campus and the first company that came on campus was a huge network system which has these satellite network communication systems in the US. They were hiring for their Bangalore operation and we were one of the few people with the first jobs on campus I recall
Building Ixigo: Challenges and Growth
00:16:39
Speaker
so we celebrated and all and then
00:16:41
Speaker
And then I got a second offer from Amadeus, which was a travel technology company based in Somme. And just to make sure that we would all join the people who got selected, they actually gave us a seven day fully paid tour of the French Riviera.
00:16:56
Speaker
and the campus of Amadeus. And that was enough to floor us and leave the Bangalore offer and go and join them instead. So that's how I ended up with Amadeus in France post college. So help us understand the business model of Amadeus. And I believe this kind of is pivotal in your own journey as an entrepreneur. So what exactly does Amadeus do? How do they earn revenue and how have they evolved over the years?
00:17:24
Speaker
So, Amadeus is a global distribution system which was formed to essentially allow airlines to have more control on their distribution, right? So, airlines use Amadeus for managing their inventory, hosting their inventory and distributing it further downstream to agents and consumers, right? So, think of it as very large mainframes that have the final seat allocation for every flight
00:17:48
Speaker
So there are two large companies there, you know, the stable and other. There's actually just three, but then these two are the large ones that control most of the airline inventory in the world. And I was actually hired for something new and cool. So they were they were actually realizing that browsers were becoming
00:18:05
Speaker
than you think because till then all the travel reservation was done on green screen terminals, right? Which essentially you have these black screens where you type green commands, you know, you must have seen some of the, where they used to reserve tickets this way until even a few years back, they would be new. Bloomberg terminals used to be in the past. Yeah, so they look similar. These GDS terminals where you type long commands to check availability and pricing and reserve seats.
00:18:32
Speaker
When I got hired, like this was 2001, the world was moving towards browsers, right? So there was obviously Internet Explorer and Firefox and a couple of other emerging browsers back then. And the idea was that, you know, why shouldn't travel agents or distributors start taking advantage of these tools? And their thesis was that maybe for an airline ticket at that point, maybe it was not that critical to have a visual interface, but for, you know, things like a cruise booking, which is very high margin,
00:19:00
Speaker
and where you cannot sell a cruise without showing something visually, right? I mean, unless there's photos and videos, nobody's going to be buying a cruise ticket, right? You can't even imagine what the product or service is. So I was actually part of a small team that wrote the world's first browser-based cruise booking software back in 2001, 2002, called Amadeus Cruise.
00:19:21
Speaker
this is for agents for agents to sell to their customers like those days you i mean even today cruise is sold a lot to walk in customers you know or people who actually want to talk to someone before they buy right and the agents would walk them through these like we build this whole visual of the entire ship.
00:19:38
Speaker
where you could zoom down, zoom out, zoom in into things, you know, choose the exact cabin, get inside the cabin, see the photos. It was a pretty rich experience built in JavaScript back in 2001 too. It was fun to learn JavaScript, you know, a bunch of very smart engineers and, you know, that's something I'm still very proud of, like what people expect there. And I think post that, you know, I got bored of UI or like the UI, UX side of things and decided to move a little bit more towards the backend. So then,
00:20:06
Speaker
I switched roles after a couple of years to more of our systems and networks. They had this development data center in these for another entire global developer pool. And I started managing the systems and servers in front and understanding how the back-end technology works from an operation standpoint. So did that for a year and then moved to MCI for my business school in 2004. Why did you decide to do an MBA?
00:20:35
Speaker
both me and my co-founder, by the way, were Amadeus. And our biggest frustration there was that despite working very hard, we felt that we were not
00:20:46
Speaker
utilizing all our potential and you know when we would look at the increment every year like this was Europe right this was France right like if you got a one or two percent increment you were you were lucky guy right so so broadly you know I think there was a sense of frustration building up on being a small cogwheel in a big system right which happens in every anyone working for a large company ends up feeling that way after a few years
00:21:10
Speaker
unless you know you kind of move up the ladder and do meaningful roles etc. I think the pace of work and this was the this was like probably the best place to live like by far right French Riviera you have Arabs and you have the CV on the other side Mediterranean and you have like 35 hour work week
00:21:25
Speaker
you know, if you overstay at work, you know, you get asked by your boss every day, like, why did you stay back late yesterday? That kind of a culture, right? And I still remember once, you know, I asked my boss permission that, can I actually work this weekend? And, you know, because I wanted to like finish something earlier than what I planned for. And he's like, you know, are you crazy? Go and chill out. It's a weekend, right? And that's, that's the kind of cultural difference between the way we work in India and, you know, the way we work in Europe.
00:21:50
Speaker
But when you're 24 or 25 and you're ambitious, that doesn't work, right? I mean, you probably want to do more, stretch yourself more, grow faster, learn more stuff. And it was slightly out of frustration and more out of, okay, I'm still young, I can still learn a lot, so why not figure out what an MBA really does for you? A lot of people.
00:22:10
Speaker
I mean, my family wouldn't be to at least do a master's before I think of doing anything in my life. So that was something they were also kind of saying a great idea. I felt I was a good disconnect from my near perfect life, but then it would give me some discomfort post that to figure out what to do next, but then it was worth it to have that discomfort in your life.
00:22:31
Speaker
Last but not the least, I think I was looking to move out of France. I spent four, four and a half years there. So I needed a break, like move somewhere else. And in India, you know, I had an opportunity to choose a campus. So I chose the Singapore campus, which was pretty new back then. I really wanted to be back in Asia after my business school. That was something I was clear about. Like every day I'd pick up the newspaper in Europe and they would talk about the growth of India and China. So it was like 2004, right? The next big thing is going to be China and India, right?
00:22:58
Speaker
Then you figure out that you have all the skills and why would you not consider moving back to Asia is that opportunity. So went to Singapore campus in Seattle and my co-founder Rajneesh, who was also my flatmate back in France, stayed on with Amadeus for another year. It was only after I finished in Seattle that we started talking about the idea of setting up something together in India. So yeah, it was more frustration and wanting to utilize your full potential.
00:23:26
Speaker
So once you finished NCI, did you opt for placements or were you clear about doing your own thing? No, I wasn't clear about anything. When I went to NCI, the coolest thing to do was to become a consultant or an iBanker. That was a deep path for most of the people you spoke to. I was clear about iBanker, I didn't really want to. I mean, I didn't really see the kind of value that gets created in those kind of jobs. Consulting was something that sounded cool from the outside.
00:23:51
Speaker
And I sat through all the consulting, like the big four interviews, got rejected by most of them. I mean, I went to the final round in one of them, and the guy told me, you can't think straight. You know, after getting that kind of feedback, I said, fine, no more consulting interviews for me. And, you know, I did get a couple of industry offers, but nothing in what I liked.
00:24:10
Speaker
I really wanted to do so i decided to move back to india so i wrote to a few indian companies and one of them was a mixed sized travel technology company called final quadrant which is just been featured on the cover page of one of the business magazines here you know they were sending a travel technology system to travel agencies across the world to help them go online you know i figured out that it was an interesting opportunity because
00:24:33
Speaker
for the BT business development, partnerships kind of role, which is a skill I thought I need to build over time because as an engineer, you want to understand more of business and sales before you decide to become an entrepreneur. So even though at the back of my mind, I was clear about moving back to India, I wasn't yet sure about jumping into entrepreneurship directly because I said, I've never worked in India. I've never run a company before. I've never been at a very senior position in a company.
00:25:00
Speaker
just been an engineer before my business school. So might as well work for someone and figure things out, right? And learn before you take the plunge. So I spent about eight, nine months working for them. But the urge to start something kept going stronger and stronger in those eight, nine months. And I think it was around, you know, June 2000. Actually, April, May 2006, that I decided to quit and started working on the idea of fix to go around June 2006.
00:25:25
Speaker
school that I want to start up my own thing. And I'll go into why and how that happened as well. So in 2005, two seminal events happened. One was there was a movie called Swades launched at the end of 2004, which I watched, I think January or February 2005. And it kind of run the bell inside me because you know, the story was really about somebody who has already achieved everything in life outside
00:25:50
Speaker
of india and wants to come back home and to me it sounded like you know that's my story and i really should be going back now to contribute with my skill set in my own country rather than thinking of a job abroad and this was a time when i was interviewing so actually after watching swarays i actually did not do a few interviews because i thought you know if i have to move back to india i might as well focus on jobs there right and very few indian companies actually come on campus at
00:26:12
Speaker
So, I started applying directly to their website or through my network and that's how I landed my job. So, that happened and the second thing was the TU jobs commencement speech, which I think also happened. I guess it was, you know, April or May 2005 as well.
00:26:29
Speaker
That each also kind of, you know, made me realize that the connecting the dots backwards. If I start doing that, you know, the fact that I've worked in the travel industry, the fact that, you know, I myself was an avid traveler. Like when we were in Europe, you would travel almost every couple of months to some new country around. And, you know, so that was one of the passion of my life and good with technology, you know, understood computers decently. Well, love the Internet. And India was a market where the opportunity was.
00:26:58
Speaker
Right. And the moment I started connecting all the dots, I was like, I need to be back in India and I need to start up something on my own. However, neither did I have the capital nor the business or sales know how at that point, because
00:27:10
Speaker
Yes, I had a business school degree, but I didn't have any practical experience running any business or being a part of a leadership team in any business. So I decided to first do that job for as long as I would require to learn those skillset and then do my own thing. But that each kept growing bigger and bigger over time.
00:27:30
Speaker
working for someone and working for your own thing is never the same. Worked there for about 8-9 months, cracked quite a few accounts in Europe and then around April-May 2006 decided to just one fine day I went to my boss and he said I want to quit because I want to start doing something of my own. He was like fine. Came out of the blue for him.
00:27:50
Speaker
And then I just rented out an apartment here in Gurgaon. And that time Gurgaon was a few buildings along the highway and then huge piles of dirt beyond that. So the apartments were dirt cheap.
Strategic Growth and User Acquisition
00:28:08
Speaker
That's why not Delhi but Gozawa and there's nothing similar to what Gozawa is today. So, called up Rajneesh, called up another friend of mine at Amadeus who might work within the Amadeus schools project, German guy and convinced them to join me down here. So, actually we had Rajneesh and Yen.
00:28:26
Speaker
And we, you know, started figuring out what are we building for India. And over time, you know, that idea became Mexico. So that's how we started. So what was the thesis that you started with that you knew you want to do something in the travel space? What was the travel market like at that time? And did you see that there is a gap in the market? What did you think you would do?
00:28:47
Speaker
So actually, when we started, the initial idea was to build a travel technology company that could be a SAP business for airlines and OTA and give them technology to run their commerce and operations. So because when we were at the GDS side of things at Amadeus, we realized that the suppliers themselves were not very well equipped on technology. And so maybe powering them with technology could be cool. So that's why we call the company
00:29:14
Speaker
When we started, we called it Travel Plus Avenues. And the idea was more B2B than B2C when we initially started working on it. And we even had a customer, you know, we did some work for a company called Isango, which was building an activities and tours marketplace, right? And we were prospecting, you know, few airlines and a few other international travel companies.
00:29:37
Speaker
But then it struck us that the B2C opportunity in India was also stopped there. MMT guys had just come back to focus on India. Initially, they were a US to India focused business, but they had now come to return to focus on India. There was Yatra, Travel Group, Clear Trip, etc. who just raised their first round of funding to build an OTA for a B2C here.
00:29:59
Speaker
And they were, of course, air-decker. And in those days, Sahara and a couple of other airlines were competing and starting to stimulate the market with very low airfare. So, it started to look like the OTA market would happen. Even though it was very early days, there were not even 50 million internet users, probably 30 or 35 million internet users.
00:30:19
Speaker
back in 2007. So the market was very, very small in everybody's eyes, but the size of the price was still large enough for people to start looking at backing. Right. But we, when we looked at the B2C space, we were clear that, you know, the model we really liked back then was the meta search model where you work with all the inventory providers and you help the consumer shift and mine through all those deals and fairs and allowed them to find where the best deals are and book it there. Right.
00:30:46
Speaker
It's a bit like what other companies in the West had started to do, but even those companies were just a couple of years old. So for India, you know, that market was definitely ahead of its, you know, like the idea was ahead of the time. And when we actually went to a lot of airlines with the meta search idea, they rejected it on day one because they sort of said, you know, OTA marketing build out, why would you do a meta search? But we didn't want to actually do what everybody, I mean, one of the things
00:31:11
Speaker
DNA-wise always has existed that we don't like doing things the way others do and the reason is because most of the time the run-of-the-mill solution is not what the consumers want right so our thesis was that people and it was all desktop back then so we said people don't want to open five browser windows and do the same search on the airline side and four OTAs and then compare the pricing they want to do all that in one place right so so that was the idea with which we started x ago and we started
00:31:37
Speaker
you know building connects to the airline and the ots or in some cases you know pulling those fares from the website and allowing consumers to compare and get redirected back to book wherever they found those fares compelling enough right and just on the sheer ux and simplicity that we came up with so when we launched in june 2007 right
00:31:57
Speaker
you know, we were overwhelmed by the kind of response we got within the first few weeks, just because, you know, we had a much more faster, smoother time and money saving experience for everyone. So it just grew like wildfire by word of mouth. Right. In the next few months. You, you decided to shut down whatever B2B initiatives you had by that time. Like you were pretty clear that you want to do. Yeah. So we were very clear by the end of, absolutely. So I think we were very clear by end of 06 that that's not what we want to do because
00:32:25
Speaker
We saw that the sales cycle were very long. There were multiple issues. The sales cycle at airlines and even large travel companies were sometimes up to a year. And secondly, B2C started looking like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, saying that if we don't get into this, we will miss the whole bus consumer coming online and searching and buying travel online. So it was end of 2006. We decided that B2C is what it is.
00:32:49
Speaker
It took us six months to build, to go and launch it. So June 2007, 3rd of June, as per the date we actually took it live. And the site almost crashed that evening because a lot of people sent it out to all the mail groups and Yahoo chat groups and all those things that existed back then. There were people working in companies like Microsoft and Google who made their entire teams about it and that we started to see a lot of hits coming from those IPs. And it was interesting how in those days Word of mouth used to work.
00:33:17
Speaker
How was this product superior to say a make my trip, clear trip kind of a product? Because they have something similar where they aggregate fares across multiple airlines, but they also handle the payment and reservation part.
00:33:31
Speaker
So Akshay when we launched, we used to search all these sites as well as the airline sites and return those results to you faster than their own website code. And there was some secret sauce there. We used something called Ajax back then, which was very, very cutting edge. Like none of the OTAs really used it. It allowed us to bring down the speed of response to second because many of them used to take a minute. And then we built a really slick user interface with
00:33:55
Speaker
first of its kind features like we had a fair graph for fair calendar fair graph etc for the next 90 days you know we started we started doing mobile friendly features because in those days there was VAP there was not there was no mobile internet per se but there was something called VAP and we were the first VAP compliant travel company as well we even did a SMS gateway for travel search within a month of launch with basically a number you could message to and get fairs and information back so I think our approach
00:34:25
Speaker
was to be the best at UX and be able to find the best deals wherever they are because when you're not owning inventory, you can build a much more efficient model by where you don't need to spend a lot to attract your consumers and you don't need to build a large operations out to service those customers, right?
Overcoming Financial Crises
00:34:43
Speaker
So it was kind of a growth hack for us to get into the market fast and
00:34:47
Speaker
That growth hack over the years, you know, got us to a million plus monthly users. And that's the only point when we decided that we need to go down a little bit more towards the transactional side of the fund. How did you fund it in this first year while you were working on the launch, like seven new launch? So from six to seven, how did you fund the business? Actually, I did have a little bit of savings, even though I still had a MBA loan, I hadn't paid off, but I had a few lakhs of savings and the other
00:35:16
Speaker
initial teammates also brought in a few lakhs of capital but I was very little I mean in hindsight that's like in today's terms you know it sounds very small it was not even 20 lakhs right and that helped us with the initial capital to buy a few computers and get started right and pay our rent for a year or whatever but yeah I think we were very naive on this topic if I look in retrospective I don't think we were caring or worrying a lot about hey will there be funding when will it come because you kind of assume that it will build something good it will come
00:35:45
Speaker
And the reality was different because we approached a lot of investors, you know, even before launch to show what we were doing and then even post-launch. And we didn't get a lot of interest because people thought that the OTA space, you know, like they didn't understand how we were different at that point and how much operating leverage we had versus the OTA. And secondly, you know, I think the market and space itself was so new that for a lot of investors, you know, writing our checks
00:36:10
Speaker
in a market where four rotis have already raised money and the market itself, nobody knows how big that is. That was not cool. When did you do your first fundraise? Actually, the initial capital that we raised was from family and friends. So a few of my relatives, a few of my friends, they put in some money end of 2006 to support us because we kept running out of money every three months.
00:36:31
Speaker
I think the first 6-7 months we survived on our own money, then we realized that the cost really ratcheted up once you take up the service space. By the time we had launched, we realized that we would need more money because you would then have more traffic coming in and you would need to take professional server hosting and things like that.
00:36:48
Speaker
So that's the time when we brought in a couple of angel investors who were largely my friends from my business school. And I kept talking to all the major investors in India. There were not that many, probably eight institution investors in India. And most of them had already either said no or said let's talk in six months or things like that.
00:37:06
Speaker
But it was in early 2008 when we got a call from a Singapore-based investor who had looked at our website and found it pretty cool and dusty. And he was a Norwegian guy called William Clebgen who later on became our first seed investor. So he ran a fund in Singapore that committed half a million dollars to us in February 2008.
00:37:26
Speaker
and that I still recall what happened there so you know this was January we were running out of money I mean to the extent that the office needed by that time we've taken a very small office like a six-seater office like literally like you know like 200 square feet of space you know nothing nothing very fancy and
00:37:45
Speaker
You know, the day I actually wrote a check to buy a printer because we needed a printer in office now. Some need was there, an offer letter print. So we had one girl who was our HR admin and everything rolled into one and she was like, we need a printer.
00:38:03
Speaker
So I was like, okay, it costs 10,000 bucks. Let me go and buy it. So I went out and I actually wrote a check to buy it, right? And the check actually bounced. So the next day the guy was at our office door saying, you said check the bounce. So we in front of all, like we had two or three employees by then. So, um, and I was like, Oh, shit. So we don't even have 10,000 in our account today. And this was, this was around the same time when I got this call from, from William, um, because otherwise I would have had to claw more money from my friends and family and, and, you know,
00:38:33
Speaker
figure out how to survive for a few more months. And William says, you know, you need to fly down to Singapore and present to my, you know, my co-investors, my partners, essentially. And that was a big discussion for me and Rajneesh, because we were like, here, there's pieces are passed to Hani, like, we'll have to eventually fade out of our own pocket, like we're down to literally the last bit. And are we going to punt it on a flight ticket to Singapore or what, right? And
00:38:58
Speaker
we were like here there is no downside in it worst case we lose 20,000 bucks right but let's just try this so i actually took that flight out and presented to you know william and his partners and the unbelievable part was that you know i did this one hour long one and a half hour long presentation they said you can wait downstairs in the hotel lobby and you know we'll see you in a bit and in an hour you know william walks down with a troublesheet which is the standard troublesheet and he's like
00:39:23
Speaker
This is what our standard term sheet is. Let us know if you're okay with the terms because we'll send this to you by tomorrow. And I didn't even read it actually. I said, you know, looks okay. It was actually a standard term sheet, but I flew back to India and you know, we couldn't believe that we just raised half a million dollars.
00:39:44
Speaker
meeting. But that's how our seed round happened, right? One thing I realized, I mean, now that I'm an angel investor on the other side, you know, one thing I realized is that, you know, when you're writing a very early stage check, I think a lot just boils down to, you know, the person that you're trusting in the product that you're seeing live, right? I mean, you can't really do a lot of homework beyond that. And I think for William, also, when we talk to him, like, how did you make that
00:40:06
Speaker
Initially, he was like, you know, I really like your team and your approach towards building something, you know, new with a different approach, right in the market, which was already competitive. And we were very frugal. So he actually, as a part of the diligence post term, she did come down and visit our office. And we were a bit
00:40:23
Speaker
you know, let's say afraid or scared or whatever saying here, literally we sit so close to each other that you know, if I move my elbow, I'll touch the next chair. What will you think, right? And you know, we don't even have a meeting room. So he said, I want to do a two hour long meeting with you guys that the CCD my back then get downstairs. There was a CCD from there and
00:40:43
Speaker
And you know, when we sat in CCD, he said, you know what, guys, I'm really impressed by how you're operating up there, because frugality is what I really look for, you know, in early stage companies. And that is so rare, right, in an investor or even here, because I think a lot of people out there fall for flashy stuff, right. But, but you know, we've kind of been that way, even like even today, we might have more meaningful resources and
00:41:07
Speaker
I think there is a there is a frugal mindset we still operate with and that is something you know we've learned from those hard initial days where we were bootstrapping and then you know half a million lot a lot of money so even that even after that money came in you know we realized that we wanted to scale fast we would have to
00:41:26
Speaker
hire a bigger team, move into a bigger office, start doing marketing. So, costs start inflicting very, very quickly, right? And the only good news was the moment you announced a fundraiser like that, all your series A guys are suddenly calling you off, right? The same folks who
00:41:41
Speaker
who already said no a few months back. We started getting a lot of inbound from institutional investors. One of them even wrote us a term sheet, but that term sheet unfortunately did not close due to Lehman Brothers crisis in September 08. So within like
00:41:58
Speaker
six months of raising money, we were in a situation where we had a broken term sheet and with just three to four months of bomb sitting in the bank based on our current burn rate at that point. Even though our traffic had snowballed significantly, we were already doing like 250,000 unique users a month or something in that range by the end of
00:42:18
Speaker
2008. But revenue-wise, it was just a few lakhs of revenue a month, not even enough to pay salaries, forget about anything else. So it was really still burning a lot of money every month. So we were left in a crisis situation, essentially, within that high point that I described of raising money. It was within seven months or back, back to a very low point where you figured out that you're going to lose everything if you don't act. And that was a turning point for our journey.
00:42:48
Speaker
What was the way you were monetizing the product till then? Like how did you make money when people would search and go out of your website? If you clicked out from Exigo and you bought a ticket on one of the partner sites of ours, we used to make money, you know, either on a CPC or a CPA basis. Right. And then we had ads. So we had we had banner ads or text ads on our platform that we monetized from these two primary modes of monetization. And by then we had started
00:43:15
Speaker
expanding into like we started building hotels and buses. It was very early days, but started partnering with companies like Redbus and others in the space. And we'd also started train information. Back then, IRCTC API wasn't really available for everyone. So we started doing information-led content for trains, right? Because there were a lot of queries starting to come in for schedules, routes, availability,
00:43:44
Speaker
timing. So we started building a lot of
00:43:47
Speaker
pages for that sort of content. And mostly the marketing we were doing was search engine optimization, trying to rank well on Google for those three. And I think Facebook was very news, but we started leveraging it as a platform for social reach. Very early company to start doing that back then. I mean, we had a one or two member content marketing team that started posting quizzes and content, etc. on Facebook back in 2008, nine, I'm talking about, you know, so. But but we realized that we
00:44:16
Speaker
We couldn't fight the same battle that the OTA's were fighting on TV and print, burning millions of dollars every year and raising subsequent rounds of funding year after year. In total, in the five years that post our seed round, most of the OTA's in India would have cumulatively burned through 300 to 400 million dollars.
00:44:35
Speaker
largely on marketing spend. And it was a very bloody battle being fought out there. But in our mind, you know, one thing we were certain of was that this is a long already, there is no urgency to kind of, you know, go for hyper growth, by burning a lot of money, given that the market itself was very severely under penetrated, right, we were talking about maybe now 50, 60 million internet consumers, it's not more than that.
00:45:01
Speaker
So it was still a very, very small part of the overall market that was online. So we said, you know, even if we kind of start fighting that battle late, I don't think we'll lose much. It's just a question of surviving till then. So you said that you would make money from partner sites. Would you also list like non-partner sites like when someone would search for airfare from A to B?
00:45:22
Speaker
We had a few of those listings, but those were very small airlines, which helped us to build content for those routes as opposed to, especially for international, like international, obviously we were not partnered with everybody that we showed. Like we were partnered only with the top five, six carriers, folks like Amirite or Lufthansa, et cetera.
00:45:40
Speaker
because A, you didn't have the bandwidth to go and partner with everybody and B, you didn't care because the long tail would not be more than 20-30% of your booking, right? So you always start with the top carriers that you're able to monetize from and that's what we did, right? Was it a tough sell like you previously found out that the B2B cycle is a long cycle and difficult to do? So when you started going, because initially it would have been free traffic for them, right? You had a meta search engine where... Yes, so what happened?
00:46:08
Speaker
Yeah, so when we launched, it was all free traffic for everyone. But we went to airline and said, look, here are the UTM codes you need to track in your Google Analytics or whatever you do and tell us how many bookings this is driving for you. If you think that we're growing your bookings week on week, you know, then let's partner and we can show you even faster growth, right? Getaways and Indigo were the first two airlines back then.
00:46:30
Speaker
to sign up with us. And I think they were both very progressive in their thinking when it came to digital marketing and understanding of this space. And they knew how meta searches outside India, such as Kayak or Skynar, were benefiting airlines in their region. So they could see the value of a meta search player emerging in India, because it also creates a balance of power in their mind for the ecosystem.
00:46:55
Speaker
So I think as we showed our staying power and growth, you know, airline started to believe that this is something that could definitely grow over time and be useful to partner with. And I think sometimes you just have to be persistent. So even with the other airlines, even though they didn't sign up within a couple of months of launch.
00:47:12
Speaker
I was so persistent like I remember that there were at least three times when I went to the Kingfisher Airlines office it used to be in fort in you know old Mumbai and I just I would just sit in the reception waiting for a meeting with the right guy for up to two to three hours right because the guy was busy in several meetings and he would keep pushing that meeting around because he like he wasn't really sure on
00:47:33
Speaker
Like I was a nobody back then. Mexico was a no one. And you know, I think just having that persistence of going and sitting there for three hours. And I used to remember those days of fun because I used to take this local downtown church gate and walk down to the office in Fort and.
00:47:49
Speaker
and sometimes come back without a meeting at all but not get dejected and show up again the next day right so you have to be persistent and that was the lesson i also learned when i was in my fundraise that you know like we got so many no's that at one point you feel dejected right at one point there was this female venture capitalist who told me that you know you know what i look you're wasting your time you won't be you won't even be able to raise a hundred thousand dollars with an idea like this
00:48:13
Speaker
right and I remember I cried birthday when I went back to my and this was in Bangalore I went back to my hotel room and cried because like no entrepreneur wants to hear that about what they're so passionate about and all I said was that you know the only thing I can do is work hard and prove her wrong right I mean there's nothing more I can control so that's the way you have to approach the situation every time you get a rejection so it was same with the airlines I think it took six more months to bring on everybody else
00:48:39
Speaker
But we did bring all the airlines into paying partners.
Ixigo's Resilience and Team Commitment
00:48:43
Speaker
By 2010-11, it was obvious that Exego was becoming a force to reckon with because we were the only travel company growing without any marketing spend. I mean, literally our marketing spend on Google in 2009-10 was zero dollars, right? Like we were not spending any money on SEM, which is the same for the last four and a half months.
00:49:01
Speaker
I'm proud to say last four and a half months we spent zero on Google, right? So whenever you're in that situation and you can still grow, I think it does inspire a lot of confidence. And then 2011, seeing our numbers, you know, a lot of the investors started coming back and talking to us, you know, and make my trip, obviously also approached us to make an investment and they were safe.
00:49:22
Speaker
And that deal came together in 2011, safe and MMD invested in our business in the series A round. And, you know, we that was the first time we had serious institutional money. So you can say that from 2006 to 2011, five years we survived on less than a million dollars. I think we did a small bridge round in 2000, early 2010. Sorry, early 2009, when with the same. So
00:49:50
Speaker
They gave us a very fair deal. They said we will give you a valuation that reflects your growth since we invested. However, you need to bring in, you know, X dollar from the outside and we will match it with a fellow as investors ourselves, whatever amount you are able to bring it. And we went back to all our friends, family, my INSEAD network, two of my professors, the dean of INSEAD in Singapore and one of my entrepreneurship professors, Patrick Turner. He was so much in love with the idea like he had one phone call with him and he wired the money the next day.
00:50:18
Speaker
He didn't even wait for a term sheet to be signed. And he brought in the dean of INSEAD with him because they could see that the company was doing well. All the numbers were tracking up. Running out of money is a situation, but performance of the company has nothing to do with that.
00:50:36
Speaker
The performance of the company is good and you're running out of money and your metrics are decent and your unit economics are great. There are always people who will support you, right? We saw that. And so we brought in the 250K from the outside. Our feed investors matched with the 250K and they were extremely supportive.
00:50:54
Speaker
from the word go when they saw the crisis coming they said don't worry keep executing cut down costs but you have our support right and so we did another 500k sort of interim bridge round maybe it was just under 500k so in total for five years we had almost bootstrapped because as founders I don't think our salary was anything more than 20-30 thousand a month for those five years of our life right
00:51:17
Speaker
Were you married by then? I got married in 2009, end of 2009, November 2009. And after much of these things were sorted, you know, and I think one of the things I realized by that time was that some of these things are not in your control. So as an entrepreneur, you know, one of the mistakes one makes is that you always feel that you're in control in your the boss and you're running things and you can do whatever you want. But you know, when a crisis hits, you realize that a lot of things are not in your control.
00:51:45
Speaker
And for me, you know, it was that pivotal moment where I said, you know, if I'm not thinking about what I'm doing in my personal life at this point, you know, because that's one thing you can still, you know, focus back on because for three years, you might not thought a single minute about it. So 2009, I decided to get married and settle down to some aspect.
00:52:07
Speaker
The company was on fire in terms of growth. Right. So one of the interesting things is 2009 and 10 were amazing years for us. Like we grew at more than a hundred percent year on year on every metric. And we're talking about like economic downturn. Right. Year. So when this whole crisis came, the way we approached it was pretty unique. Right. So we were 24 or 25 people at that point as a team. And we could see that we wouldn't last more than three, top four months, you know, with the kind of money we had left. So we needed to act. Right.
00:52:37
Speaker
And the knee-jerk reaction when we spoke to people was that, you know, you should just let your team go and increase your runway to like seven, eight months, nine months, and nine months may hopefully, you know, things will start getting better and you will bounce back. However, you know, we had so painstakingly built this team and, you know, one of the
00:52:55
Speaker
Biggest learning for me in the last 14 years is that, you know, it's all about the people and the team you build, right? I mean, without them, you cannot achieve anything. And if you hire the right people, you know, they can really take you into another orbit. And so these are all handpicked people painstakingly brought brought in by us. Now, we couldn't even imagine or think about how we could let these people go. Right. And that too, during a time when finding a job would be difficult as well. So.
00:53:21
Speaker
So when we had that discussion, we said, let's be transparent with the team. And Rajneesh and I went to the whiteboard and actually told them what our P&L was looking like transparently. We said, look, this is how much we're earning every month. These are the three main heads of our costs. And this is how much runway we have. Now, if we need to extend this runway to a year, this is what we need to do. So we said that the most likely outcome is that we may have to let some people go. But then if there's any other outcome,
00:53:49
Speaker
you can all work out on, you know, I love to hear your views. And this younger engineer called Ayush stands up and says that, you know, why can't we all just work without salary for a few months? I did that help because, you know, he said, I just did the math in my head, but two months without salary, which means, you know, you get a lot of runway as a result. And I was like, you know, that sounds cool, but then, you know, most people have their own rent and EMI and multiple things going on. Right. So you can't, it's not practical.
00:54:15
Speaker
And then, but the buzz started in the room, like people are talking to each other suddenly and like, they're like, what if we all go down to like half of our salaries or, or, you know, something like that. It automatically extends the runway by that much. That was a pivotal moment because we realized that the team has just found a solution that we didn't think of. And since.
00:54:34
Speaker
Since they've come up with the solution, there's immense buy-in for it. And we said, fine, you know, let's do that. So as founders, we went to zero and the team went to half their salary and that continued for almost nine months. We were able to revert salaries only nine months later. Let me tell you not a single person of that team and maybe one or two of them left on their own accord because
00:54:52
Speaker
Marketing is something we're not doing but then all the core people Product tech, you know business none of them left us for at least two years post that Movement that some of them stayed for another four or five years, right and most of them saw us through till the time we were breaking even I mean so end of 2010 we were almost breaking even like 2011 we were on the verge of profitability, so
00:55:14
Speaker
I think it was a massive turnaround. We managed to execute with people who were committed and we gave ESOPs to all of them.
Future Prospects: IPO and Impact on Travel
00:55:22
Speaker
Some of those people monetized their ESOPs when our series happened and ended up with a few crores which we are very proud of and then some of them went on and started their own company. I think riding this up and down curve is very important in every startup's journey because it does teach you a lot about who you are and what you're capable of doing.
00:55:39
Speaker
OK, so what would you say is the secret sauce of Ixigo? And if I were to make a guess, I would probably say it's two things. One is that you've used technology and done very clever ways to outshine your competitors through technology, like the example of Tara, which you gave just now. And I think the other is that your approach to marketing has been very unconventional, where you have, for example,
00:56:08
Speaker
I would say that building the train app is like a marketing first decision that it helped you acquire a lot of consumers. Or similarly, you have a viral video factory in house. What do you think about that? I think if I sum it up, you know, we've been very blue ocean in our thinking, right? When I went to India, I learned about blue ocean strategy, but
00:56:30
Speaker
Broadly, Blue Ocean is that you're not deriving what you do from any playbook, right? Whether it is the kind of people we hire, the culture we built, you know, the kind of the way we have reacted to, you know, adversity, the way we do marketing, the kind of product we've built, our approach to business models and how agile we've been in changing them with the time, or how we think about new products, right?
00:56:53
Speaker
We don't compare ourselves with others and as a result it is hard to find comparables with us and I think that's that's the way you build a unique product and brand right because if we get too biased by what's already out there and if we get You know internally people say, you know, hey, why are we not looking at what that company doing? And I'm like, you know, we should never look at competition. We should only
00:57:16
Speaker
spend more time with customers, right? Because if we know what the customers want, we would have built that even before the competition. And even if they have built it and the customers don't want that, they'll discover it within a year. So there's no point looking at what competition is doing. There is more value in
00:57:32
Speaker
at the leading edge of listening to your customers. To the extent that even today, me, my co-founder, my leadership team, reads a lot of feedback personally, responds to at least 1% to 2% of the feedback ourselves, attends to a few customer calls or queries every month ourselves. During the COVID times, the entire team was on customer support, including marketing and engineers and product guys.
00:57:58
Speaker
Because if you're not close to your customer you will not understand their pain and only by being close to them you will come up with blue ocean thinking which is not box by some dog mind what already exists out there and what an ota.
00:58:12
Speaker
what the definition of an OTA or a meta needs to be because at times, you know, when I speak to investors, they're like, what are you? Are you a meta or a OTA? Are you a hybrid? And I'm like, you know, I'm exego, right? You know, I don't like being boxed into. I want to build the most consumer centric company in this space and I want to build it with
00:58:30
Speaker
a lot of empathy for my customers because I believe most OTAs out there do not have that much empathy for their customers. Unlike in e-commerce where you have some brands that are built on the basis of customer empathy and customer experience, in the OTA space, you cannot think of one brand that can offer you great customer experience and we think that is an opportunity. That is why we decided to pivot fully to an OTA model
00:58:52
Speaker
in the last years or so. But we are the youngest OT in the space. We spent 10 years being a meta and maybe one in one year being an OT at this point. And I think time will tell how we can improve our customer experience to become the best in the space. Do you foresee needing to raise funds again? Or since you've already hit profitability in the last quarter of previous financial year, then
00:59:16
Speaker
I mean, we'd see at this point, obviously, you know, travel is the worst hit category, right. And I think from a fundraiser perspective, it's not the right time, because we would rather, you know, wait it out, survive the crisis and come out shining on the other side before we speak to anyone. And obviously, our current assessment is that we should be able to turn profitable sooner than
00:59:42
Speaker
people with higher fixed costs in this space. So, you know, we think that within the next six to 12 months, we should be back to profitability with even some growth in the category. And yeah, I mean, if we are able to get back to profitability soon, we may not need any further capital. If not, you know, we may have to talk to investors sometime next year once things are bouncing back.
01:00:04
Speaker
So what do you see as the end goal? Do you want to take it public? Take Exigo public or do you see a larger company acquiring Exigo or you know, what do you see as the long game?
01:00:16
Speaker
I think after we turn profitable this year, you know, we are increasingly confident that we can take this company public. We are one of the hardly any profitable OTA in this category. So we are one of the only profitable ones. If we are able to build scale next, so profitability plus scale is where it becomes interesting to IPO. I think given COVID, you know, it's going to take a setback for a year before we can plan that out. But it looks like within three to four years, you know, an IPO is foreseeable.
01:00:46
Speaker
So what is it that you personally have as a goal for yourself? Is there something, some answer that you're seeking to something you want to learn? You know, what's driving you personally?
01:00:57
Speaker
Look, when I started this, what was driving me personally was, you know, wanting to come back to India and do something meaningful, right? With my ill talent and passion and, or as the Japanese say, the ikigai, right? Where you're, what you want to do and what you love doing, you know, and what can pay you, et cetera, all come together. I think I'm enjoying this journey. It's been a very,
01:01:24
Speaker
long journey. It's been almost 14 years, like I said, but it doesn't feel that long. Every day has been exciting. There's always a lot of ups and downs, but that's what makes it more enjoyable. I think the meaning I'm seeking is, can we end up building a brand and a legacy that lasts the test of time?
01:01:44
Speaker
And that is something where still a lot of work may be required. We might only be 1% done in terms of how large an impact Exego can create for travel in India. And that's what I would want to do before I think that I'm done. Interesting, right? We sure as hell must thank our look for creating a website that has made the process of booking flights, hotels and accommodations
01:02:13
Speaker
easy, simple and highly efficient. For all of those who are planning a trip around the country head to www.xego.com and suit yourself to some exciting offers and deals.
01:02:26
Speaker
If you like the Found a Thesis Smartcast then do check out our other shows on subjects like Marketing, Technology, Career Advice, Books and Drama. Visit the podium.in for a complete list of all our shows. This was an HD Smartcast Original.
01:02:55
Speaker
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