MakeMyTrip announces Rajesh Magow as new Group CEO

Leading online travel firm MakeMyTrip on Tuesday announced the elevation of Rajesh Magow as the Group CEO of MakeMyTrip as founder Deep Kalra takes up the role of Executive Chairman.

"We believe that separating the roles of Group CEO and Executive Chairman will allow us to focus more on long-term strategic opportunities within and outside India while maintaining our market leading position in our existing businesses," said Deep Kalra, Founder of MakeMyTrip, during the earnings call.

The board and "I have the utmost confidence in Rajesh's capabilities in his elevated role to drive the next phase of growth for the Group through its three strong brands, MakeMyTrip, Goibibo and Redbus. In this role, he will continue to work closely with me," he added.

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The transition will also help Kalra devote full time and focus to strategic initiatives for MakeMyTrip, which would include product innovation and expansion, geographic growth, business model innovation and corporate development.

MakeMyTrip also reported a narrowing of its adjusted operating loss to $11 million (over Rs 78 crore) for the quarter to December 2019.

The company had posted an adjusted operating loss of $22.2 million (over Rs 158 crore) for the corresponding period of the previous fiscal, it said in a statement.

The adjusted revenue for the quarter under consideration reached a new quarterly high of $206.7 million (over Rs 1,470 crore). It was $179.9 million (over Rs 1,280 crore) for the same period year ago.

MakeMyTrip Group achieved a record of quarterly gross bookings of over 1.7 billion dollars, the company said.

The company achieved a new record of nearly 8.3 million room nights in our standalone online hotels business during the third quarter this fiscal, it added. This represents a year on year growth of over 21 percent and a reacceleration in volume growth from the previous two quarters, it added.

"We evaluate our financial performance based on adjusted revenue, which represents IFRS revenue after adding back promotion expenses in the nature of customer discounts, customer inducement/acquisition costs and loyalty programmes cost, which are reported as a reduction of revenue, and deducting the cost of acquisition of services primarily relating to sales to customers where the company acts as the principal, as we believe that adjusted revenue reflects the value addition of the travel services that we provide to our customers," said MakeMyTrip.

(Edited by Saheli Sen Gupta)