ixigo reported a GTV of Rs 5524.33 crore, up 19% year on year for quarter one of this fiscal. The company reported revenue from operations of Rs 356.75 crore, up 13% year on year. The company reported a net profit of Rs 34.24 crore, up 81% year on year.
Hotels emerged as ixigo’s fastest-growing line of business by GTV during the quarter under review, recording half a million check-out stays during the quarter. ixigo had strengthened its presence in the hotels business this year through the acquisition of a 54.66% majority stake in flexible stay hotel platform Brevistay, expanding its presence in the flexible and short-stay accommodation segment. The company’s direct hotel footprint expanded to over 10,000 properties across 700 towns in India, and the overall hotel supply crossed 70,00 properties across India and 1 million properties worldwide.
“Hotels have started to achieve critical mass for us, both in terms of the supply being created, and a larger team through the Brevistay acquisition that is also adding thousands of new hotels every quarter,” said Bajpai. “In a few more quarters, the numbers will go up even further. Nearly 90% of our hotel bookings are coming from the existing user base, giving us a structurally efficient and capital light way to scale the category. Even though we are investing to grow hotels, compared to any other OTA, we are having to invest far lower because we have a large user base already,” he added.
Bajpai said the company’s hotel extranet HELLO AI platform, that works on onboarding hotels and maintaining relationships is also getting ‘significant’ adoption. “We now have more confidence in our ability to crack this category. We are the market leader in trains. We are the second largest in buses. It was natural for us to then spend time on growing accommodation. In the next four to five years, the ambition is to win the mid market and budget segments as an OTA,” he added.
The Brevistay acquisition is not yet fully consolidated, said Bajpai. “That started from July. So, this growth in quarter one is independent of the acquisition.That will only accelerate this further,” he added.
He said the company’s user base for accomodation has very different needs than other OTAs. “The supply that we are solving for will also be more suited towards that demand. When we raised money from Prosus, this was one of the categories to go after,” he said. “We have all kinds of supply, but we are a little more mid market, middle class traveller oriented in our approach, and our supply focus will be tilted towards that category,” he added. About 70% of hotel inventory in India is in the unbranded segment, said Bajpai. “When you look at just that part, online penetration falls to 10%. I think the OTA market for hotels hasn’t been fully created yet.”
The global assumption that you build a large OTA, through flights and then move on to hotels is getting challenged in India, said Bajpai. “For instance, 90% of the travellers who booked a hotel in Varanasi didn’t reach there through a flight. When you look at such statistics, it is fairly obvious that we are onto something which is the right path for winning this in the long run.”