Yatra Online, Inc. (Yatra) operating as a full-service online travel company in India and one of the most well-recognized travel brands in the country, addressing the needs of both leisure and business travelers.
The company was India’s largest independent corporate travel services provider and the second largest consumer online travel company in India (based on management’s analysis of publicly available information), with approximately 15 million travelers that had booked their travel through...
Yatra Online, Inc. (Yatra) operating as a full-service online travel company in India and one of the most well-recognized travel brands in the country, addressing the needs of both leisure and business travelers.
The company was India’s largest independent corporate travel services provider and the second largest consumer online travel company in India (based on management’s analysis of publicly available information), with approximately 15 million travelers that had booked their travel through it as of March 31, 2024. The company has the largest number of hotel and accommodation tie-ups amongst key OTA players of over 2,305,097 tie-ups, as of March 31, 2024.
Leisure and business travelers use the company’s mobile applications, its website, www.yatra.com, and its other offerings and services to explore, research, compare prices, and book a wide range of travel-related services. These services include domestic and international air ticketing on nearly all Indian and international airlines, as well as bus ticketing, rail ticketing, cab bookings, and ancillary services within India. The company also provides access through its platform to hotels, homestays, and other accommodations, with approximately 108,800 hotels and homestays in approximately 1,506 cities and towns across India, and more than 2 million hotels around the world. To ensure that the company’s service is truly a ‘one-stop shop’ for travelers, it also provides the company’s customers with access to approximately 803 holiday packages and more than 1,484 other activities, such as tours, sightseeing, shows, and events.
The company was the leading corporate travel service provider in India, with 849 large corporate customers and approximately 56,125 registered small and medium-sized (‘SME’) customers as of March 31, 2024.
The company operates through two go-to-market strategies: business to consumer (‘B2C’) and business to business (‘B2B’), which includes business-to-enterprise and business-to-agents. In addition, the company’s travel agent network provided additional scale to its business by leveraging its integrated technology platform to aggregate consumer demand from approximately 53,340 travel agents in approximately 1,063 cities across India as of March 31, 2024.
The company’s business is based on a common technology platform that serves its customers through multiple mobile applications, as well as its website, www.yatra.com. The company’s technology platform has been designed to deliver a high level of reliability, security, scalability, integration, and innovation.
The company has moved towards a ‘Mobile First’ business and has experienced rapid user growth on its platform, with mobile being the primary channel for customers to engage with it. During the fiscal year 2024, the company’s web and mobile properties received approximately 140 million visits. The company’s mobile applications had been downloaded approximately 28 million times as of March 31, 2024.
The company has opened its holidays booking platform to third-party vendors, enabling them to sell holiday products alongside those packaged by it, using its platform as a marketplace, providing its customers with a wide selection of products and services.
To further strengthen customer loyalty and provide an incentive to the employees of the company’s corporate customers to transact with it as B2C customers, the company operates a proprietary eCash loyalty program that enables travelers that book through its platform to accumulate and redeem points, where applicable. The company’s eCash loyalty program acts as a surrogate and fills the loyalty gap that exists across product categories, such as air travel and hotels in the travel market in India. The company has over approximately seven million eCash registered users on its platform. During fiscal year 2024, approximately 93% of the company’s customers’ visits have been from direct and organic traffic. The company has moved towards a ‘Mobile First’ business and has experienced rapid user growth on its platform, with mobile being the primary channel for customers to engage with it.
The company experiences seasonal fluctuations in the demand for travel services and products offered by it. It tends to experience higher revenues from its hotels and packages business, or ‘Hotels and Packages Business,’ in the second and fourth calendar quarters of each calendar year, which coincide with the summer holiday travel season and the year-end holiday travel season for its customers in India.
Distribution Platforms
The company’s distribution platforms are a combination of its website, mobile applications, and network of travel agents, as well as call centers specifically for holiday packages. The wide range of the company’s distribution platforms provides it access to Indians traveling domestically or internationally, and to non-resident Indians and others traveling inbound to India and to other countries.
The company has developed a common technology platform approach that enables a consistent user experience across multiple channels and different products, supporting its go-to-market strategy across its B2C and B2B channels. The company’s customer ‘touch-points’ include its mobile applications, website, and call centers, as well as ‘embedded’ teams within some of its B2B clients. In addition, through the company’s platform, it addressed the needs of a large fragmented market of travel agents, empowering approximately 53,340 agents in approximately 1,063 cities across India as of March 31, 2024. Combining these offerings on a common technology platform allows the company to develop an ongoing repeat relationship with its customers, regardless of the specific channel through which they started using its services. For example, using its platform, B2B customers are able to explore and book their subsequent leisure travel through Yatra, potentially benefiting from its eCash program that rewards them for doing so.
The company’s website and mobile applications provide the following capabilities:
Exploring & Searching: The company’s web and mobile platforms enable customers to explore and search flights, hotels, holiday packages, buses, trains, and activities. It has developed a Natural Language Processing/Machine Learning, or NLP/ML based text/voice search engine on its website to optimize search results. The company also has an NLP/ML-based customer support knowledge engine to address users’ queries without dialing the call center, thereby reducing the servicing cost and increasing customer satisfaction levels. To further engage consumers, the company has a number of features, such as ‘Lowest Fare Finder,’ ‘Super Saver,’ ‘Things To Do,’ and notifications.
Total Visibility: Using the company’s platform, customers are able to search for the lowest price available on any given date, identify dates with public holidays and widely celebrated events, and obtain additional information, such as Google reviews, information on refundable or non-refundable fares, and number of stops on airline bookings and hotel and room amenities.
Booking: Once a customer has decided to book travel, the company offers a range of payment options, which include bank transfers, credit cards, debit cards, and online payment through third-party online payment platforms, as well as buy-now-pay-later and no-cost EMI facility.
Carbon Emission for Flights: A customer will be provided flight-specific and seat-specific details of carbon emissions next to the price and duration of the flight. This will help the customer to make more sustainable choices and will help customers track their footprint. The feature has been introduced in the pursuit of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations General Assembly.
In addition, for international transactions, the company uses a ‘Dynamic Currency Converter,’ which supports 29 currencies and converts prices from INR to another currency so that international credit cards can be charged.
Virtual Assistance: In March 2018, the company launched ‘YUVA,’ which stands for Yatra Universal Virtual Assistant. This feature allows the customer to use both voice and text to communicate with Yatra support on the go. YUVA is available on desktop, Android, and iOS. Supporting various Indian accents, YUVA enables intuitive customer interaction in a relatively human-like way, answering questions related to flight bookings and providing assistance in real-time.
Meta Search Tool: In April 2022, the company launched a Meta Search Tool for its corporate customer base. This will help large corporate customers with multiple vendor partners to search across those vendors and display the best available option for their employees on a single screen, along with the rates directly contracted by the corporates with the airlines and the hotels. This option is available across domestic and international flights and hotels. This is an expansion of the company’s self-book platform to a platform with rich integrations, special request management, advanced supplier management, and precise and agile reconciliations and dashboards.
Strategic Partnership with Cleartrip.com: In February 2022, the company entered into a strategic association with Flipkart (part of Walmart group) owned Cleartrip.com, wherein Cleartrip’s customers would have access to the company’s inventory of 108,800 hotels and home stays of various kinds, ranging from 5 Star luxury properties to alternative accommodation, such as villages, guesthouses, and service apartments in approximately 1,506 cities in India.
Yatra Prime: During May 2023, the company launched a travel subscription plan ‘Yatra Prime’ to target high-spending frequent travelers and family travelers. The program provides a variety of benefits to customers, such as no convenience fee, special fares on domestic offers, access to dedicated and on-priority VIP customer support. The endeavor of the program is to make travel more affordable, convenient, and enjoyable for customers. In 2024, Yatra Prime extended to hotels as well.
Mobile Applications
As smartphone penetration has grown in India, the company’s mobile apps have become a critical component of its consumer offerings. The company has multiple applications for a variety of consumer segments and services, including:
Yatra: The company’s primary mobile interface to its core platform, which has been downloaded approximately 28 million times.
Yatra Corporate: A self-booking application for the company’s business customers.
Since the launch of the company’s mobile apps, it has experienced rapid growth in the traffic on its mobile platforms and as of fiscal year 2024, the company’s mobile platforms accounted for approximately 79% of its total consumer visits.
Websites
The company’s websites are a travel platform servicing customers across India and outside India, which allows customers to book travel-related products and services. The websites are a single platform to explore, shortlist, and book airline tickets, hotels, holiday packages, bus tickets, rail tickets, and taxis. The company has also developed customizable portals for its corporate customers and travel agents.
Customers can quickly review the pricing and availability of the company’s products and services, evaluate and compare options, and book and purchase such products and services online within a few minutes. For the company’s holiday packages, customers can submit their inquiries through its websites, and its sales representatives contact such customers to follow up and process the transaction, if required. In addition to its product and services information, the company’s websites feature comprehensive travel advice ranging from basic information to customer reviews for the destinations it covers. Customers can also raise complaints about the company’s travel products and services through e-mail or contact it on its customer care number. The company’s websites have been designed to provide a user-friendly experience to customers and are reviewed and upgraded from time to time.
Mobile Applications
The company’s mobile applications had been downloaded approximately 28 million times as of March 31, 2024.
Through the company’s Android and iOS-based mobile applications, customers can conveniently access all their past and future bookings, check and modify booking details, and request for e-tickets and details on text message service. In addition, customers can utilize the web check-in feature for flights on its mobile applications. The company also offers discounted travel products and services that are exclusive to users of its mobile applications for limited periods to enhance its mobile user engagement. Further, it also offers an ‘airplane chat’ feature on its Android mobile application that allows passengers to communicate with each other.
Transaction on Websites and Mobile Applications
The company offers customers the flexibility to choose from a number of payment options, which include bank transfers, credit cards, debit cards, and online payment through third-party online payment platforms. Customers can also deduct the purchase price of the company’s travel products and services by using its coupons and travel vouchers. In order to simplify the booking process for customers, the company’s websites and mobile applications do not require prior customer registration in order for the purchase to be completed. Electronic confirmations are sent to the customer’s e-mail addresses or mobile phones and the customer can use the itinerary management function on its websites to check the booking details, as well as amend or cancel the bookings.
Travel Agent Network
The company’s travel agent network has access to Yatra’s customized portal, which allows them to offer their customers its various products and services. The company has a wide network of approximately 53,340 travel agents registered with it across almost all major cities in India, as of March 31, 2024.
The travel agents registered with the company can access its websites, enabling them to sell its full portfolio of travel products and services to their customers. The company enters into agreements and contracts with such registered agents and also takes deposits from them at the time of registration in certain situations. These travel agents earn commissions from the company, depending on the volume and type of travel products and services sold. The company also passes through cost benefits to agents on the promotional offers received from airlines. In addition, the company’s travel agent network has continued engagement with it through regular meetings and e-mails.
Marketing and Brand Awareness
The company has invested in developing and promoting its brand, using a combination of online, offline, cross-marketing, social media, and other marketing initiatives. Traditional or offline channels include print, radio, television, mass media campaigns, and short messages, as well as through its call centers. Online marketing includes search engine marketing and other innovative digital marketing tools, such as search engine monetization, viral marketing, and online display banners; other advertising networks, including mobile advertising partners; search engine optimization and display advertising on websites, along with e-mails. Social media marketing includes continuous engagement on social media platforms. The company’s presence in online social media enables it to grow and maintain engagement with its targeted customers.
The company’s marketing programs and initiatives also include promotional, seasonal, festival, and event-related offers, including certain women-centric marketing campaigns that it has introduced recently. As part of the company’s cross-marketing effort, it has entered arrangements with various banks and payment gateways offering promotions for the purchase of tickets on its websites and mobile applications platforms.
Products and Services
The company offers a comprehensive range of travel and travel-related products and services catering to the needs of passengers traveling domestically, as well as traveling to and from international destinations. It provides customers with various tools and information that they need to research, plan, book, and purchase travel products and services in India, as well as outside India. The company offers its products and services online through its websites and mobile applications and uses data and analytics to personalize the customer experience on its websites and mobile applications, based on past searches and purchasing history.
The company has teams managing its existing airline relationships, hotel relationships, and holiday packages. These teams also work to expand its offerings and network. A selective mix of negotiated rates, payment terms, and co-participation promotions has resulted in a compelling consumer portfolio offering with an opportunity to leverage the company’s large customer base and cross-sell effectively.
The company’s products and services are organized primarily in the following segments: airline tickets, which consist of the sale of airline tickets, as well as airline tickets sold as part of the holiday packages; hotels and holiday packages, which consist of standalone sales of hotel rooms, as well as travel packages (which may include hotel rooms, cruises, travel insurance, and visa processing); and other services, which consist of rail tickets, bus tickets, taxi rentals, and ancillary value-added services, such as travel insurance, visa processing, and tickets for activities and attractions.
Air Ticketing Business
The airline ticketing business is primarily targeted to domestic air passengers and international travel from India. The company has access to real-time inventory either via GDS service providers, such as Amadeus and Galileo, or through a ‘direct-connect’ to the airlines. It has relationships with all major airlines operating in India, domestic and international. The fares paid by the company’s customers include a transaction fee, and this, along with the ‘per-segment’ earnings from the GDS providers, the commissions, and volume-linked incentives from the airlines, forms the revenue accrued to it. The company provides its customers with access to over 400 airlines for domestic and international travel. Its relationships include all major full-service carriers and low-cost carriers. These include domestic carriers, such as Air India, Air India Express, Akasa Air, IndiGo, SpiceJet, Vistara, Alliance Air, and international airlines, such as Air France-KLM, British Airways, Emirates, Etihad Airways, Lufthansa, Malaysia Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Thai Airways, and Qatar Airways, etc.
The company’s airline ticketing business provides comprehensive information and options to consumers. Its comprehensive and integrated platform is designed to allow customers to use customizable search and filter options to list, make selections, and execute transactions, all in a seamless fashion. Customers can search and sort by date, airline, class of travel, fare price, origin, destination, and number of stops, and the company’s search results can be enhanced by its customers’ recent searches, history, and preferences.
The company earns commissions and incentives from airlines for tickets booked by customers through its various sales channels. It either deducts commissions at the time of payment of the fare to its airline suppliers or collects its commissions from its airline suppliers. Incentive payments, which are largely based on the volume of business, are collected from its airline suppliers on a periodic basis. The company charges its customers a service fee for booking airline tickets and receives fees from its GDS service providers based on the volume of sales completed by it through GDS. Revenue from airline tickets sold as part of packages is eliminated from the company’s Air Ticketing Business revenues and added to its Hotels and Packages Business revenue. In addition, the company also earns revenue from convenience fees, cancellation service charges, rescheduling charges, and advertisement revenue that it may charge along with the travel booking.
Hotels and Packages Business
Hotels
As of March 31, 2024, the company’s customers could review and book flights on all major Indian and international airlines and accommodations at approximately 108,800 hotels and homestays in approximately 1,506 cities and towns in India, as well as more than 2 million hotels around the world. In fiscal year 2024, more than 1.7 million standalone hotel room-nights were booked through its platforms.
Contracting with hotels is done by a dedicated team that is responsible for onboarding listed properties, as well as negotiating rates and promotions. Hotels can also self-manage their rates, inventories, promotions, and margins using the company’s extranet (mobile and web versions). Hoteliers also have an option to access the extranet via a Channel Manager API, an interface that lets hoteliers connect their software application to its extranet.
The company has India’s largest hotel inventory with approximately 108,800 properties on its platform, especially in the key ‘budget’ category in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities that match Indian consumers’ preferences.
Holiday Packages
The company’s holiday packages offerings consist of both fixed departure and customized holiday packages. Given the company’s focus on Indian middle-class consumers, many of whom are not seasoned travelers, its customers typically prefer booking holiday packages where most elements of their travel, including flights, hotels, sightseeing, transport, visa, and insurance, are all taken care of. The company has approximately 887 holiday packages to destinations within India, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, and has established ground handling operations and partnerships in Dubai, Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia. The company also opened its platform to third-party holiday package sellers who can now sell alongside its own products through its platform, thereby offering its customers a wider choice of products.
Other Services
Rail Ticketing
To leverage the convenience of online bookings, the company entered the rail travel market in September 2007, with inventory made available by IRCTC. IRCTC is a subsidiary of Indian Railways that handles the catering, tourism, and online ticketing operations of Indian Railways.
Bus Ticketing
To leverage the convenience of online bookings, the company entered the bus travel market in September 2014. To ensure consistency of supply, it sources its tickets from a combination of suppliers.
Activities
Launched in July 2016, the company listed more than 1,935 activities inside and outside India as of March 31, 2024. The company offers a broad range of activities to its customers at multiple price points, including tours, historical and contemporary sightseeing, luxury experiences, romantic trips, events, shows, food tours, cooking classes, and others, each ranging from a few hours to a full day.
Yatra Freight
In October 2020, the company launched a new end-to-end freight forwarding business, its ‘Freight Forwarding Business,’ which connects companies with multi-modal logistics options. As the company looks towards digitizing the logistics space, its corporate travel relationships with both airline and enterprise executive management, together with its technology capabilities, give it a significant head start. As of March 31, 2024, the company has a team of approximately 60 seasoned freight and logistics industry professionals. The digital platform that the company is building has the potential to scale up its business.
New Initiatives
During May 2023, the company launched a travel subscription plan, ‘Yatra Prime,’ to target high-spending frequent travelers and family travelers. The program provides a variety of benefits to customers, such as no convenience fee, special fares on domestic offers, and access to dedicated and on-priority VIP customer support. The endeavor of the program is to make travel more affordable, convenient, and enjoyable for customers. In 2024, Yatra Prime extended to hotels as well.
Growth Strategy
The company’s strategies are to grow its customer base using cost-effective technology solutions; grow ‘Share of Wallet’ with existing customers—leverage the company’s multi-channel approach and its loyalty programs; further strengthen its focus on corporate business; invest in technology—a ‘one-stop shop’ for all travel needs; leverage its existing travel agent network in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities; and fuel growth through innovative acquisition strategies.
Supplier Relationships
Airlines
The company has access to real-time inventory either via Global Distribution System (‘GDS’) service providers, such as Amadeus and Galileo, or through a ‘direct-connect’ to the airlines. The company has relationships with all major airlines operating in India, domestic and international. The fares paid by the company’s customers include a transaction fee, and this, along with the ‘per-segment’ earnings from the GDS providers, and the commissions and volume-linked incentives from the airlines, forms the revenue accrued to it. The company’s relationships include all major full-service carriers and low-cost carriers. These include domestic carriers, such as Air Asia, Air India, Air India Express, Go First, IndiGo, SpiceJet, Vistara, and international airlines, such as Air France-KLM, British Airways, Emirates, Etihad Airways, Lufthansa, Malaysia Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Thai Airways, and Qatar Airways, etc.
Hotels
The company has a hotel network of approximately 108,800 hotels, and approximately 1.7 million hotel room-nights were booked through its platforms in fiscal year 2024. The company has a team responsible for supply-side contracting, onboarding listed properties, and demand generation. The company also has an extranet portal that hoteliers use to access and manage their inventory, rates, and promotions. Hoteliers also have an option to access the extranet via a Channel Manager API, an interface that lets hoteliers connect their software application to its extranet.
Freight Forwarding Business
In October 2020, the company launched a new end-to-end freight forwarding business, its ‘Freight Forwarding Business,’ which connects companies with multi-modal logistics options. As the company looks towards digitizing the logistics space, its corporate travel relationships with both airline and enterprise executive management, together with its technology capabilities, give it a significant head start. As of March 31, 2024, the company has a team of approximately 60 seasoned freight and logistics industry professionals. The digital platform that the company is building has the potential to scale up its business.
Customer Service
The company is dedicated to ensuring a superior user experience on its platform, and a critical component of that is customer service. The company provides customer support in all stages of its customers’ trips—before, during, and after. The company’s ‘chat’ system is an important means of communication between buyers and sellers, buyers and its customer service, and sellers and its seller support. The company monitors feedback from its customers using an in-house CRM system that helps to provide simple, tailor-made tools to provide rapid and effective support. The company has approximately 166 employees in customer service, including supervisors, sales representatives, quality assurance, and process control teams. There is a four-week induction and training program for its employees, which is managed by its in-house training team.
Central to the customer experience, the company’s customer contact centers are closely aligned to the business and are equipped to meet all customer needs. These centers are open seven days per week and provide customer support until midnight. This enables the company to provide a seamless customer experience across all channels. To improve flexibility and cost efficiency, the company also utilizes third-party customer service providers. In most cases, the company’s staff is stationed in third-party customer contact centers to ensure that the customer experience is maintained to its unified corporate standards.
The company has made efforts to enhance its automation capabilities to largely automate its post-booking engine to allow amendment, cancellation, and refund of bookings. This automation has been deployed across the company’s websites, apps, and WhatsApp. Additionally, the company has also deployed a GST invoicing solution to automate the collection of GST invoices for corporate customers and from its suppliers. This automation allows the company to scale without deploying incremental manpower, thereby providing operating leverage in its business model.
Competition
The company’s success depends upon its ability to compete effectively against numerous established and emerging competitors, including other online travel agencies, traditional offline travel companies, travel research companies, payment wallets, search engines, and meta search companies, both in India and abroad, such as Agoda Company Pte. Ltd., Akbar Travels, Amazon India, Booking.com B.V., Expedia Southeast Asia Pte. Ltd., Flipkart Pvt. Ltd., MakeMyTrip Limited, Cleartrip Private Limited, Easy Trip Planners Limited, Thomas Cook India Limited, FCM Travel Solutions India Private Limited, GBT India Private Limited, CWT India Private Limited, MakeMyTrip (India) Pvt. Ltd. (including Ibibo Group), One 97 Communications Limited, Oravel Stays Ltd., Riya Travel and Tours (India) Private Limited, and Le Travenues Technology Private Limited, and in each case, including their affiliated and group entities.
The company also faces increasing competition from widely used search engines, including Google, Bing, and Yahoo!.
Intellectual Property
The company’s intellectual property rights include trademarks and domain names associated with the name ‘Yatra,’ ‘Yatra For Business,’ and ‘Travelguru’ primarily, as well as copyrights and rights arising from confidentiality agreements relating to its website content and technology.
Yatra India and its subsidiaries have registered the primary domain names, namely www.yatra.com, www.yatra.in, www.tsi-yatra.com, and www.travelguru.com, and have full legal rights over these domain names for the period for which such domain names are registered. The company conducts its business primarily under the ‘Yatra’ brand name and logo and has registered the trademarks under a couple of classes mainly in India.
Regulations
Yatra India has obtained registration from the Ministry of Tourism to act as Domestic Tour Operator and Inbound Tour Operator, which are valid until May 7, 2024, and May 7, 2024, respectively. Yatra India is also accredited with the International Air Transport Registration, which is valid for 2024.
Under the Indian Information Technology Act, 2000, as amended, the company is subject to certain liabilities pertaining to the implementation and maintenance of reasonable security practices and procedures with respect to sensitive personal data or information that it possesses, deals with, or handles in its computer systems, networks, databases, and software. India has also implemented privacy laws, including the Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules, 2011, which impose limitations and restrictions on the collection, use, and disclosure of personal information. Furthermore, the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, as amended, impose certain obligations on intermediaries to review content and users, make reasonable efforts not to, and to cause their users not to, host, display, or transmit specified categories of non-compliant content, and take action against non-compliant users and remove or disable access to such content.
The company has obtained approvals to operate its domestic and international call centers in India as ‘Other Service Providers’ (‘OSP’) from the Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India. The company’s approval in respect of Domestic OSP and International OSP is valid for 20 years from October 18, 2013, and September 26, 2012, respectively.
The company also obtains and maintains registrations under the Shops and Establishments Act and Rules of each state where its offices are located.
History
Yatra Online, Inc. was incorporated in 2005.
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