MakeMyTrip aims to grow with new services, expanding in cruises & experiential tourism, says CEO

Thank you, thank you.

Yeah sure, so let's first talk about the quarter that we've reported, and then we'll come to the future outlook as well. One highlight you've already pointed out is that we've been making profit consistently as we came out of COVID. But the other important highlight is also the topline growth, and that has been consistent as well. That is on the back of two major factors: one, the macro factor — the country's growth rate, disposable income growing, overall income growing — coupled with the fact that consumer habits are changing in favor of spending a larger portion of disposable income into travel and experiences. That's definitely helping. The other important factor specific to MakeMyTrip is that a lot of the new investment initiatives we had taken about two to three years ago — some of them right in the middle of COVID — as we've come out of it, they are gaining traction and scale, contributing to additional growth. So it's a combination of the initiatives we had taken and the macro trends helping us deliver good results, definitely a higher growth rate than the market. Now talking about outlook, if you link it back to the overall country outlook, the Central Bank of India recently came out with a projection for the next two years' growth rate of about 6.7%, which is fairly robust. I'm hoping this growth rate continues, which means the macro positive trend will continue. If that's true, and the other factor — the investments we made reaching new segments and new channels of growth — there's still a lot of headroom there. We should hopefully keep delivering a higher growth rate than the industry. I'll add one more thing: over the next couple of years, we're also adding more products and services, given our vision of being a one-stop shop for all kinds of travel use cases. We've built pretty much all the travel use cases over the years, but whatever is left we will add more. On the product and innovation side, we're going to lead with generative AI technology. We've started that journey, made progress, and we're likely to accelerate further.

Well, I don't think there's going to be any new acquisition per se. On the inorganic expansion strategy side, if you look at our track record, we've invested in specific areas — either building capability or adding a new product. We just recently announced, as part of our corporate business growth strategy, the term sheet we signed for Hae, and we're hoping to consummate the transaction soon. Similarly, in the past we made investments in the forex space, the intercity cab space, and Saari. We'll continue that investment thesis wherever we see capability buildup we don't have plans to build organically, or a niche segment with a good team. There won't be any change in that strategy. On organic growth, besides scaling up all the new initiatives — corporate business has been growing at a very healthy rate, alternative accommodation or homestays we've come a long way in building supply and demand traction, international use cases like outbound flight and hotel bookings, packages, intercity cab — we want to scale all of those up. We'll also add a couple of new products from the pipeline, including activities and experiences in destination, cruises, and forex which still needs scaling. We've also gone live with visa services, so we want to bring in all ancillary products as well. It's a combination of adding new products and services, scaling up where there's significant headroom, and making sure the steady-state business continues to grow at a higher rate.

Before talking about the hospitality sector specifically, there are many outstanding demands out there. But the expectation on the overall budget is that, going with the country's growth trend, it should be a growth-oriented budget that sets the tone for every sector including travel and tourism. Within that, the long-pending demand of the hospitality sector for industry status continues to remain, and I think it's an important one. The other item on the wish list — the government has been doing a great job allocating money for infrastructure investment, which is the backbone for travel and tourism. If we continue that pace not only in allocation but also in implementation — expanding highways, building new airports, solving for last-mile and first-mile connectivity — that'll be great, because we won't lose the momentum built over the last few years. There's a lot of investment happening in new areas, specifically in the pilgrimage segment, creating new destinations and experiences. If we keep following up on our infrastructure expansion strategy, that's definitely going to help the momentum continue for the travel and tourism industry. For overall India, not losing the momentum on infrastructure spend will help the country.

I don't think I would say that. The reason is that travel and tourism and hospitality are very much part of the same ecosystem. Travel and tourism is being talked about a lot, right from the central government to various state governments. A lot of the infrastructure investments are also helping the sector — look at the new airports that have come up in new cities over the years, even the UDAN scheme was really powerful in expanding connectivity with smaller cities. As part of that, the hospitality and accommodation sector has also been growing. Having said all of this, I'm sure the industry is looking for a lot more, because as you rightly pointed out, it has huge potential. We keep going back with our wish list in various forums and trying to get the government's attention. The good news is there have been a lot of consultations, and if we continue showing the potential, I'm sure that'll fall in place. Overall, I think we've made good progress already on travel and tourism.

Absolutely, it's a very critical, very strategic focus area for us. We started our journey a few quarters ago. In fact, before generative AI, a lot of work on AI and ML was already happening because we had rich data. As you pointed out, one manifestation is personalized experiences, which is continuing. We've also gone live with some internal use cases for productivity improvement and efficiency gains. But the large part of our focus is improving the customer experience and taking it to the next level. We have multiple chatbots — eventually we want to consolidate them into one. There's a flight use case chatbot, an after-sales service chatbot, and last quarter we launched one for the hotel product as well. The progress will be twofold: new initiatives and features being added, and more importantly, how intelligent the bot is becoming over time. Generative AI has huge potential — we have a lot of data, and potentially can get more from other sources to make the bot really intelligent. It'll be an alternative user interface where you can complete your journey through the bot. But can you do it with voice input? Can you do it with vernacular more efficiently? Can you do a combination — speaking and giving commands, and getting voice responses back rather than just text? Those are the areas to watch out for. We've been working relentlessly, building our own capabilities and working with partners. You'll see more of this coming up, and going forward, a lot of the customer experience enhancement will be powered by AI.

It's a good observation. It has lagged behind, especially when all other segments have come back and are growing and thriving. For us at MakeMyTrip, our inbound initiative is more focused on the Indian diaspora first, not necessarily foreign tourists. A lot of our business comes from domestic travel and Indian travelers going abroad. A small portion is inbound, and there we opened platform access, becoming GDPR compliant to more than 150 countries. Now we see inbound diaspora booking on our platform — our brand is already known to them as an Indian brand. The Indian diaspora is a sizable market within total inbound, with Indians living all over the world coming back home more than once, and the frequency is increasing — not just visiting family but also doing domestic trips. That's an important segment. In terms of what can be done — what's needed is perhaps a refreshed campaign to create more awareness about what has been happening in India for travel and tourism destinations. Maybe a refreshed Incredible India kind of campaign communicated to the rest of the world, to address apprehensions and bring freshness back about what India has to offer. It's been a while since we've done that. If industry works together with government and tourism boards to come up with that consistently, things should start to fall in place, because all the other factors — connectivity, airlines, visas — have started to fall in place. I think this additional effort would make the difference.