EP17: 170 million users and a 14 year journey building the Google for travel {Aloke Bajpai, Co-founder & CEO of IXIGO}

On the episode I chat with Aloke Bajpai, CEO of IXIGO, a business that can be called a Travel industry veteran. Aloke & Rajnish have been in the travel ecosystem since the time they graduated from IIT in 2001, first jobs working at the Spanish travel major Amadeus and then building IXIGO as a travel search player in India even before flying was commonplace like it is today — at least prior to COVID19.

They’ve been building IXIGO for over 14 years, frugally. Hacking their way through many industry & business cycles and have created an ecosystem of apps that have become leaders in their space to serve 170 million users. In this conversation, Aloke shares his journey starting up, getting through previous cycles and lessons that can help navigate the current situation.

IXIGO’s mantra to garnering 170 million users:

never benchmark against competition and stay close to customers would help understand what products to build

The muscle they spent a lot of time building that would help in a downturn is their “frugal mindset” & “marketing without money.” Additionally while navigating a downturn, Aloke recommends over communicating with employees & suggest offering an upside (ESOPs) for those who stick around.

Aloke, can be found on LinkedIn & Twitter. They’re hiring!

In the 14 year journey, they have raised total capital of 35 million USD and have some marquee investors including Sequoia Capital India, Fosun Kinzon Capital, SAIF Partners, MakeMyTrip Ltd. & Micromax Informatics Ltd. apart from some angel investors from their early days.

Timeline:

02:10 — Joining the IIT’s

05:35 — IXIGO and raising cash in a downturn

07:10 — Amadeus and the origins of IXIGO

11:15 — the first year for IXIGO and fund raising

15:10 — the Google for travel

22:21 — Scaling to 170 million users

27:41 — Company culture

33:33 — Encouraging entrepreneurship

37:02 — Coming out of a downturn — learning from the previous cycles

40:51 — Raising funds from MMT & SAIF Partners?

44:19 — Solving for utility as a growth hack to becoming the largest partner to IRCTC

50:40 — Surviving the downturn