MMT’s bet on new initiatives helped its turnaround: Group CEO Rajesh Magow
Online travel platform MakeMyTrip, which has added nearly seven new business verticals since the pandemic, is now doubling down on them. While retail bookings continue to be a key revenue driver, corporate and international travel and accommodation have started paying off, said Rajesh Magow.
' s focus on corporate travel and new business lines has helped make up for the growth opportunity lost to the pandemic, according to top leadership. The Gurugram-headquartered online travel platform will now look at destination-specific activities and experiences in addition to strengthening its new business verticals.
“All international segments are under-penetrated and we will focus on that as well,” Co-founder and Group CEO Rajesh Magow told YourStory. He added that apart from strengthening its inter-city cab vertical and other segments including forex, domestic flight, hotel, and alternative accommodation services, it has also been making inroads with its business and entering new geographies.
“We have a dual strategy for redBus across domestic and international. The platform is doing well in Southeast Asia, where we are present in Singapore and Malaysia and it is the leading bus booking platform. We are exploring some other countries [in the region] like Indonesia and Vietnam, and are also present in Peru, Colombia in Latin America,” added Magow.
The company also has a presence for international flight booking in the UAE and has been scaling direct contracting for international hotels of late.
The Nasdaq-listed company, which has staged a comeback with expansion into new categories including corporate travel, will continue to bet big on the new initiatives, which have been set into motion since 2021 onwards, even as its retail flights and hotels business continues to grow significantly.
“I don't think we are looking at our overall business strategy to say that we want to be less dependent on retail business. What we are looking at is the large pie of the market, and we're looking at which customer segment has a sizable opportunity. And at every sizable pie, we want to continue to keep doubling down for our growth,” said Magow.
How new business lines and acquisitions helped MMT
MakeMyTrip made its first foray into corporate travel in 2019 after acquiring a partial stake in the corporate travel management platform for enterprises, Quest2Travel.
“A lot of the thinking started in the middle of COVID-19 and the business was disrupted completely. On our continued momentum, we would lose time and the thought process was ‘How to make up for the lost time?’ With this we started looking at newer avenues of potential growth,” said Magow, adding that this prompted the company to look beyond the retail travel segment.
The company has spent nearly $45 million on making strap-on acquisitions for the new business verticals.
MakeMyTrip's strap-on acquisitions
The co-founder added that the biggest initiative the platform took up was the corporate travel segment with the launch of MyBiz, targeted at small and medium enterprises, and Quest2Travel for the larger enterprises. The company took up an approach of go-to-market with online customer acquisition for the former, avoiding a potential conflict with the latter.
In addition, MakeMyTrip also launched other new business verticals, including a business-to-business booking platform for travel agents called myPartner and an advertising platform for brands to monetise a transacting customer base of nearly 79 million across all of MakeMyTrip’s platforms. In addition, MakeMyTrip also forayed into alternative accommodation and homestays, followed by its expansion to the GCC market, starting with the UAE. MakeMyTrip also introduced its fintech platform, TripMoney, offering insurance and forex services for travel through the acquisition of BookMyForex. The platform also added cab services with the acquisition of Savaari in 2023.
“A lot of these investments were capability building in terms of either offering a new product or service, or an attempt to reach out to a new channel of the market,” added Magow.
Growth from new channels
The new businesses are more than making up for lost opportunities, noted Magow.
Corporate travel was already demonstrating a high single-digit contribution to revenues. Moreover, the alternative accommodation or homestays segment and international flight bookings for the UAE market were key contributors to the topline, said Magow.
“Our advertising revenue is contributing more to the bottom line by monetising the traffic to the website, which has a high intent to travel,” added Magow.
MakeMyTrip saw its Q3 revenues for FY25 jump by nearly a fourth to $267.4 million, primarily driven by an increase in revenue from the platform’s air-ticketing business. The hotels and packages segment, the largest contributor to the company’s revenue, reported a 17.2% year-on-year growth for the quarter.
“If you look at the last few quarters, you will see part of it is reflected in the results. With the macro trend of growth of the overall travel and tourism market, our retail business is growing as well. And the other part of the story is the contribution from the new initiatives,” he added.
Edited by Kanishk Singh