‘We want to be the dominant player in this market but its unlikely that we would consider an acquisition outside India’

How much has Yatra.com raised in private funding to date? Can the latest funding be seen as a pre-IPO round?

Dhruv Shringi

Yatra.com has raised approximately US$120 million till date.The current funding cannot be described as a pre IPO round. This is a growth equity round.

Did the company consider other investors before signing on IDG Ventures and Vertex? How would they help you in the next phase of growth, besides providing funding?

Yes, we did consider multiple investors. However, given IDG’s experience of working with other online companies in India (Myntra, Firstcry Lenskart etc) and some of the leading Chinese internet companies (Baidu, ClearTrip etc), we felt that they bring a lot of synergies and experience which would help Yatra.com further strengthen its position in the online travel agent space.

The company’s IPO plans have been delayed due to market conditions in 2013, when can we expect Yatra.com to be going public?

Going public is a part of a new journey and a maturing step in an organisation’s lifecycle. As compared to the past when the industry was in an overhang due to Kingfisher Airlines going out, today’s market conditions looks more positive and our business has the scale and size to go public anytime. So it’s not the issue of us not being ready, it’s an issue of us deciding at what point of time do we want to take the next step. We want to time it perfectly and we might want to put certain internal metrics in place before we decide to leap forward. When we get a clear visibility on the benchmark we have set for ourselves and when we feel the market is receptive enough we will decide to go public. For us it’s not a question of ‘if’, it’s a question of ‘when’.

Is the company looking at acquisitions? If yes, which segments would you look at?

We are actively looking for opportunities on the technology side, especially in mobile technology. There are also ancillary services that we do consider, but mobile technology is really up there as something that we are looking at exponentially growing.India itself is a large enough opportunity so for us we rather concentrate here then expand geographically. Our focus at Yatra.com has always been to go deeper into India as we believe that there is a lot of upside as far as the Indian travel market is concerned. We want to be the dominant player in this market and its unlikely that we would consider an acquisition outside India.

You had mentioned, that the fresh capital raised will be used to grow the hotel and holiday packages business, and mobile technology enhancement. Could you elaborate on the growth plan?

The funding will be used to strengthen our position in the domestic holidays and hotels segment. We are the leaders in the domestic hotel space and what we want to do is further increase our supply of hotels. We currently have 15,000 hotels and we want the number to increase significantly by the end of this calendar year. The other part where funding will be used will be the mobile front. We want to enhance our product offerings on this front. We will be adding new lines of business on the apps and will be expanding the penetration of the apps.

Another aspect where we want to focus is to increase our brand presence. As the market continues to grow, you will see a lot of people coming on the internet for the first time. Because of this we want to ensure that we have top of the mind recall and are brand leaders in this category. So a part of the funding will be invested on the brand side as well.

What is the current hotel inventory on Yatra.com and how do you see these numbers growing?

Yatra.com already provides reservation facility for more than 15,000 hotels across 450 cities in India and over 200,000 hotels around the world and we are expanding our inventory as we speak. More and more hotels are keen to have their hotel selling on our site. As online adoption of hotels is also increasing rapidly, customers are looking for more choice across more cities. Our plan is to expand our reach to atleast 25,000 domestic hotels by 2015, and continue to be the OTA with the most number of hotels on offer in India.

How much share of the online travel agent market in India do you command as of now?

All our brands together would account for approximately 27-30 per cent of the OTA market and we hope to continue to gain share in this market.

Can you share the percentage breakdown of how much you earn from air ticketing, hotel and holiday packages, etc? How much does each of them account for in terms of total revenues for Yatra.com?

About 70 per cent of our revenue comes from flights and 30 per cent from hotels and packages. With the evolution that the customers are following, in the next couple of years we expect to improve significantly in from hotels and packages.