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He made instant booking of tickets a general phenomena.

The past decade has witnessed a humongous behavioral change among Indian travelers. And the change was induced by MakeMytrip.

Deep Kalra, MakeMyTrip.com

Started with the aim to empower the Indian traveller with instant booking and comprehensive choices, it has made online travel booking a common practice among Indians who until lately were inclined to research online while they only trusted traditional modes of payment for making payments.

Founded by Deep Kalra, an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, in a small office in Okhla, Delhi, MakeMyTrip started its journey in the US-India travel market in 2000 and its Indian operations in 2005. It offers its customers a bouquet of travel services and products with international and domestic airline tickets, Indian railways tickets, domestic bus tickets, international and domestic hotel reservations, car rentals, international and domestic holiday packages, and much more.

Just about a decade since its inception, the online travel agency has captured an enviable chunk of 48 percent in the online travel market. Today it is one of the most preferred names in the industry with one out of every twelve domestic flights in India booked via it. Currently, it has offices in 20 cities across India and two international offices in New York and San Francisco, in addition to several franchise locations.

While the core proposition of best deals to its customers at their convenience has helped the enterprise grab adequate attention, what has truly made the initiative a phenomenal success in the industry is the series of conscious and deliberate steps taken at the right time by the management. For instance, the enterprise’s decision to grow the high-margin non-air business by offering holidays and online hotel bookings beyond just selling air-tickets has been crucial in maintaining the growth rate. Kalra says, “While the initial growth driver for MakeMyTrip was air tickets category, we could foresee that the ridiculously low costs were not sustainable for airlines in the long run. Therefore, we also made efforts to grow the non-air business.”

Again, its decision to not market itself in India but exclusively target the NRIs and the US-India travel sector initially has paid off well.“By focusing solely on the NRI market, we managed to conserve precious marketing dollars while our competitors burned their fingers in a premature online market,” he tells us.

However, the Indian domestic market was soon ready to bring home the experience of buying tickets online. MakeMyTrip decided to launch its Indian operation in 2005. Kalra says, “We decided to launch in India with our own money. We had around Rs2 crore in the bank and we thought that we should do it.” But ultimately, they didn’t deploy their own money and instead went for private equity. “We realized that in the long run, India was going to be a hot market and all the big players would be investing in online travel which would make it important for us to focus on technology and build the brand to sustain us,” says the content entrepreneur.