The travel entrepreneur who beat the market downturn not once, but twice

Aloke Bajpai's firm Ixigo cut pay, but didn't lay off; He says 'honest communication' with staffers saw the firm bounce back during the 2008 Lehman crisis and the current pandemic-induced one

Luck has mostly not favoured Aloke Bajpai, the co-founder of travel booking app Ixigo. Twelve years years ago, just when he started work on the company, the 2008 Lehman Brothers crisis hit. That led to at least one investor pulling out the term sheet. Now, in the pandemic year, travel is one of the most, if not the most, affected business industries and Ixigo is in a tough spot.

In the early months, March to May, there was a complete halt on flying, and bookings had dried up on Ixigo. As nobody was travelling, hotels were shut too. These two