 "The world will move away from \"spammy\" notifications and emails: Aloke Bajpai")
We will see intelligent virtual assistants emerging in the travel and hospitality sectors, with concierge services becoming more automated and apps solving a lot of issues, Aloke Bajpai tells Sangeeta Tanwar
Ixigo.com recently ventured into budget hotels, packages and cabs segments. How's been your experience in these segments?
Online travel makes up nearly 70 per cent of all e-commerce in India and we are poised to become the third largest online travel market in the world by 2020, with over $20 billion of travel transactions projected to be done online annually by then. Each of these three segments are very promising and we have seen pretty good traction and growth for these products.
At Ixigo.com, we have gone from 15 per cent of our traffic coming from mobile phones in 2013 to over 78 per cent today. Tier 2 and tier 3 audiences are growing, and so is the need for localised and personalised content for different customer segments.
Metasearch has been a core business for the company. Recently, online travel agencies stopped listing budget hotels. What is the implication of this development for players such as ixigo.com?
The budget hotels market now has a significant supply and demand and we are doing what we do the best for our users - compare and present them the best options at lowest prices. Aggregating budget hotels seemed to solve a big pain point for our users, where they can compare the nitty gritty of so many similar budget hotel brands on a single platform.
The company has been pursuing inorganic growth with acquisitions such as The Indian Backpacker, Square Hoot Hikes. What value do these acquisitions bring to the table ?
The acquisition of Square Hoot Hikes fits perfectly with our overall strategy of being an intra-city and inter-city taxi booking provider with ixigo cab. This has enabled us to move faster in this segment and take a bigger leap in a much shorter time frame. The acquisition of The Indian Backpackers helped us tap a clear opportunity to build a community platform that enhances engagement and provides authentic and unbiased curated content for Indian travellers. We are now able to equip travellers with better backpacking aspects--like destinations, basic know how, suggestion from others--and will be conducting a regular set of events branded Mixigo for our travel community. The last one was conducted in Bangalore on December 13 for our biker community that saw about 50 bikers coming together from various places for a bikers' meet and a road trip.
What are your plans for increasing user traffic and grow revenue?
We are obsessed with solving traveller pain points and creating beautiful products that offer a great customer experience. We believe that as long as our focus is on the right opportunities, traffic and revenue will continue to grow. For instance, our recent focus on budget hotels, cabs and packages testifies that we are after the right opportunities.
Big data analytics and machine learning are changing the OTA space . How are you making use of these?
Absolutely! We have built a strong team around analytics and machine learning to provide a better customer experience as well as offer more targeted solutions to travellers. Our recent launch of PNR prediction feature helps give a realtime prediction of waitlisted train tickets to users and its accuracy is over 90 per cent. As smartphones become ubiquitous and apps become part of our personality, we foresee two more mega trends that strong analytics and machine learning will be fuelling personalisation and localisation.
The world will move away from spammy notifications and emails to personalised, contextual emails and notifications by applying knowledge of the search and buying history of travelers as well as their context (location, season, traveling with family or friends etc). By applying predictive analytics to the big sets of customer data, apps will start showing more relevant content and customise user experiences for individual app users. We should also start seeing more localised content with Indian languages as well as nuances that solve for local tastes.
We will also see intelligent virtual assistants (whether powered by artificial intelligence or humans) emerge in the travel and hospitality sectors, with concierge services becoming more automated and apps solving /a lot of issues without requiring to speak to anyone on the phone.
Ixigo.com recently ventured into budget hotels, packages and cabs segments. How's been your experience in these segments?
Online travel makes up nearly 70 per cent of all e-commerce in India and we are poised to become the third largest online travel market in the world by 2020, with over $20 billion of travel transactions projected to be done online annually by then. Each of these three segments are very promising and we have seen pretty good traction and growth for these products.
More From This Section
Talking about hotels, Google estimates the online hotel booking market in India will reach $1.8 billion by 2016, up from $0.8 billion in 2014. The size of the Indian taxi market at present is $9 billion. Of this, $800 million is organised and $8.2 billion is unorganised and this leaves a very big opportunity for players like us. A large part of this growth is being driven by the growth of smartphones in the country which will touch 500 million by 2017.
At Ixigo.com, we have gone from 15 per cent of our traffic coming from mobile phones in 2013 to over 78 per cent today. Tier 2 and tier 3 audiences are growing, and so is the need for localised and personalised content for different customer segments.
Metasearch has been a core business for the company. Recently, online travel agencies stopped listing budget hotels. What is the implication of this development for players such as ixigo.com?
The budget hotels market now has a significant supply and demand and we are doing what we do the best for our users - compare and present them the best options at lowest prices. Aggregating budget hotels seemed to solve a big pain point for our users, where they can compare the nitty gritty of so many similar budget hotel brands on a single platform.
The company has been pursuing inorganic growth with acquisitions such as The Indian Backpacker, Square Hoot Hikes. What value do these acquisitions bring to the table ?
The acquisition of Square Hoot Hikes fits perfectly with our overall strategy of being an intra-city and inter-city taxi booking provider with ixigo cab. This has enabled us to move faster in this segment and take a bigger leap in a much shorter time frame. The acquisition of The Indian Backpackers helped us tap a clear opportunity to build a community platform that enhances engagement and provides authentic and unbiased curated content for Indian travellers. We are now able to equip travellers with better backpacking aspects--like destinations, basic know how, suggestion from others--and will be conducting a regular set of events branded Mixigo for our travel community. The last one was conducted in Bangalore on December 13 for our biker community that saw about 50 bikers coming together from various places for a bikers' meet and a road trip.
What are your plans for increasing user traffic and grow revenue?
We are obsessed with solving traveller pain points and creating beautiful products that offer a great customer experience. We believe that as long as our focus is on the right opportunities, traffic and revenue will continue to grow. For instance, our recent focus on budget hotels, cabs and packages testifies that we are after the right opportunities.
Big data analytics and machine learning are changing the OTA space . How are you making use of these?
Absolutely! We have built a strong team around analytics and machine learning to provide a better customer experience as well as offer more targeted solutions to travellers. Our recent launch of PNR prediction feature helps give a realtime prediction of waitlisted train tickets to users and its accuracy is over 90 per cent. As smartphones become ubiquitous and apps become part of our personality, we foresee two more mega trends that strong analytics and machine learning will be fuelling personalisation and localisation.
The world will move away from spammy notifications and emails to personalised, contextual emails and notifications by applying knowledge of the search and buying history of travelers as well as their context (location, season, traveling with family or friends etc). By applying predictive analytics to the big sets of customer data, apps will start showing more relevant content and customise user experiences for individual app users. We should also start seeing more localised content with Indian languages as well as nuances that solve for local tastes.
We will also see intelligent virtual assistants (whether powered by artificial intelligence or humans) emerge in the travel and hospitality sectors, with concierge services becoming more automated and apps solving /a lot of issues without requiring to speak to anyone on the phone.