ixigo’s New Venture Travenues To Bring Deep Tech To Airline Ticketing

Gurugram-based online travel company ixigo, is venturing into supply side technology platforms for airlines through the launch of its subsidiary Travenues. With this new initiative, ixigo is looking to bring in deep tech into the aviation and airline industry.

Travenues will be based out in Bengaluru and will be looked over by ixigo vice president of special projects Chandramouli Gopalakrishnan, who will serve as the chief digital officer. Gopalakrishnan had previously worked in leadership roles at Shotang, Stayzilla and Goibibo. Travenues will be creating ticket-booking technology platforms for airlines.

While speaking with Inc42, Gopalakrishnan explained that some of the technology being used currently is very old and has not been upgraded. He added that the first product that they are developing and can be expected to be live soon is a “direct booking engine”.

According to him, the company will configure this platform which can be used by the airline companies to drive their booking funnels. So with this, once a user gets into an airline website for booking the tickets, it will be powered by the platform being developed by Travenues.

The travel search platform was founded in 2006 by Aloke Bajpai and Rajnish Kumar. With more than 100 Mn app downloads and 26 Mn monthly active users, the company aggregates and compares real-time travel information. It also provides information about prices and availability for flights, trains, buses, cabs, hotels, packages and destinations.

“We will be bringing our learnings on mobile-first consumer experiences, growth marketing, personalization, AI and voice assistants to airlines across the world. Travenues will function as an independently run business under Chandramouli’s leadership with the mission of bringing consumer-facing deep tech innovations to airlines,” ixigo founder and CEO, Aloke Bajpai, said.

In October 2018, the company recorded a 209% growth in revenue for the fiscal 2017-18 as it recorded a revenue of about $9.41 Mn (INR 66.9 Cr). The company also announced its plans to exceed $250 Mn (INR 1,777 Cr) in Gross Market Value (GMV) for FY19 with 6x growth in transactions, touching 1 Mn passenger bookings per month through its online ticket booking platform for flights, hotels, buses and trains. It had last raised $15 Mn  (INR 106 Cr) in its Series B funding round led by Sequoia Capital.

The online travel market has been growing over the recent years. With the Indian, online travel market projected to reach $13.6 Bn (INR 96,722 Cr) by 2021, not only new startups are entering the space but even ecommerce giant Flipkart has expanded its presence in this space after entering into a strategic alliance with MakeMyTrip.

Most recently, New Delhi-based online travel website EaseMyTrip is planning to raise INR 1,500 Cr ($211.08 Mn) via an initial public offering.

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