It was the late 2000s, but people in India still needed help with the rigorous and cumbersome process of ticket booking. They often had to spend long hours surfing through different platforms to get an idea of the ideal ticket price for their next trip. At the same time, two IIT Kanpur wing-mates had quit their corporate job in France and returned to India to kickstart their entrepreneurship journey, as becoming successful entrepreneurs was always what they secretly wanted.
Due to the above-mentioned practical problems what the country needed was a portal that could shorten travelers’ worries through innovative travel planning products. This is when these two IIT Kanpur graduates joined hands and founded Ixigo.
Ixigo if to be understood in one line is an AI-based online platform providing multiple travel services. The firm has recently made its stock market debut with its share price closing at Rs.162 on the Bombay Stock Exchange(BSE). But things were not always so smooth for the firm founded by Aloke Bajpai and Rajnish Kumar. It all started with a one-room office in 2007. Little did the owners know that this one-room office startup would have a market value of Rs.6,275.85Cr.
First Traction
The firm raised its first seed funding on 1 February 2008 , the amount raised was $500K.The company had a valuation of 2.07M in May 2008.
General Information
Ixigo till 2016 was just a search engine for travelers to compare the prices of better-funded platforms like Yatra, ClearTrip, and MakeMyTrip. The Gurugram Headquartered firm works on a B2B2C model. The TravelTech firm raised its latest funding in 2021 valued at $53M in Series E. Its parent firm is Le Travenues Technology – an online travel agency.
Year-on-Year Analysis
For FY20, the total revenue was Rs.154.3Cr and the growth rate from the previous year was 129%. The total funding secured by then was $35.5M and the company incurred a net loss of Rs.6.5Cr in 2020.
The next financial year the growth rate declined to 89% as the total revenue went down to Rs.138.4Cr from Rs.154.3Cr in FY20. There were no specific funds raised by the company this year. However, due to its effective use of resources and cutting on its expenditures the TravelTech firm managed to earn a net profit of Rs.7.5Cr in FY21.
In FY22, India’s leading online plus mobile travel search and planning website, Ixigo had a net loss of Rs.21.1Cr. The Gurugram-based firm generated a total revenue of Rs.384.9Cr, while the growth rate was 278%. The company had a valuation of $401M as of June 2021. The firm also managed to secure two fundings, one of $36.5M and the other one in debt remains undisclosed.
For 2023, the company’s revenue was Rs517.6Cr and the firm had a growth rate of 134%. Though the B2B2C-modeled firm didn’t raise any funds in FY23 it earned a net profit of Rs.23.4Cr.
For the fiscal year 2024, the company is expected to have a valuation of Rs6,275.85Cr with the firm launching its first IPO(Initial Public Offering) on 10 June 2024.Le Travenues Technology, the parent company of travel aggregator Ixigo, made an impressive debut on the NSE on June 18 opening at Rs.138.10, a 48.5% premium to the issue price of Rs.93. The stock ended the listing with 20% premium on bonuses. The stock closes at Rs165.72 on National Stock Exchange.
Expansion and Future Plans
In February 2021, ixigo expanded its services by acquiring Confirmtkt, a train discovery and ticketing platform. It also acquired AbhiBus, a bus ticket booking and fleet management portal, in August 2021. The firm had previously acquired Rutogo and Reach App in August 2015 and January 2017 respectively.
To expand its business presence across the globe, the company has been focusing on building product experiences based on state-of-the-art technology. They want to provide a seamless travel experience to people in India. Post-pandemic, the company launched innovative AI-based data-driven features like multilingual UI, travel assistant, Siri shortcuts, and an AR feature, allowing train passengers to allocate their positions.
To expand its business in the future, the company is looking to accelerate its functionality by enhancing efficiencies in business processes and operations.
The company plans to raise its Rs. 750 crore for organic and inorganic growth. Since its inception, the company has been investing in advanced technology, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science, to expand its travel information and crowd-sourced data in business intelligence to upgrade its travel offerings.
The robust investment of the company has led to faster growth, which it will continue to do in the future as well.
Competitors
The firm faces fierce competition from competitors like Notion, MakeMyTrip, Yatra, Expedia, Hopper, and Qunar. Currently, the majority of the market share is shared between MakeMyTrip and Notion.
