Jan 22, 09

 

Dharmendra Yashovardhan - Co-Founder & COO, iXiGo.com

 

iXiGo.com, is one of the most comprehensive and unbiased airfare search engine in India. In addition to airlines, iXiGO.com searches hotels across the world and bus routes within India. iXiGO has grown exponentially in the last 12 months. iXiGO’s rapid growth is a direct result of its disruptive business innovation model that allows travelers to search and book directly on airline sites, saving them time and money while reducing distribution costs for airlines. Dharmendra Yashovardhan - Co-Founder & COO, iXiGo.com, speaks to ACEXC. Dharmendra Yashovardhan has substantial business & technology experience consulting for Airlines and Fortune 500 companies while working or living across three continents. He is an Engineering graduate with an MBA from INSEAD.

 

“Today airlines want to attract consumers to their own direct web platform because of its low cost of customer acquisition and servicing. A search platform like iXiGO is ideally placed to help airlines in their quest to drive traffic to their own web-site because of its qualified traffic and measureable (and high) ROI.”

Dharmendra Yashovardhan - Co-Founder & COO, iXiGo.com

 

 

ACEXC: What are your views on the Indian travel, transportation and aviation industry?

 

Dharmendra Yashovardhan: I am extremely bullish on the Indian travel industry in general and online space in particular.  While recent events have had their impact on the industry, the long term outlook is still quite rosy. We are witnessing a shift in customer preference from offline to online as they search for better deals. iXiGO.com, with its unbiased and comprehensive search engine is ideally positioned to assist the consumer in his search for the best deal – this is demonstrated by the consistent double digit growth we have witnessed in the last quarter, the so called “period of gloom”.

 

ACEXC:  With the spate of launches in the internet travel space, what has been iXiGo.com's vision and guiding principles since its inception in June 2007, and what is your differentiator?

 

Dharmendra Yashovardhan: When iXiGO.com was founded, we had three basic guiding principles – neutrality, usability and comprehensiveness. iXiGO does not sell anything itself, we enable our consumers to search across all available inventory in real-time and redirect them to the end supplier site to book on their online booking platform. From consumers’ perspective, we are a comprehensive source of information for travel related products while suppliers view us as a marketing channel to advertise their inventory and showcase their key differentiators. This “unbiased” approach gives us credibility and allows us to work with all suppliers thereby insuring comprehensiveness. We are also quite focused on the product front, benchmarking ourselves against the very best internationally in terms of our usability and consumer friendliness.

 

ACEXC: You have recently announced an innovative partnership with travelguru.com, by powering its flights search.  How does this partnership benefit the customers?

 

Dharmendra Yashovardhan: Travelguru used to operate its flights business on the agency model, essentially getting commissions from airlines as incentive for the inventory sold. With the aviation industry facing increasing pressure on the cost (fuel, manpower, distribution etc.) as well as revenues (falling demand due to global recession) front, this model is not going to survive in the medium to long term. Today airlines want to attract consumers to their own direct web platform because of its low cost of customer acquisition and servicing. A search platform like iXiGO is ideally placed to help airlines in their quest to drive traffic to their own web-site because of its qualified traffic and measureable (and high) ROI. 

 

This partnership benefits consumers because they can search across all airlines sites, ensuring they get the cheapest fares. They also benefit from access to last minute inventory (same as on airlines’ own site), better customer service (especially in case of schedule change, cancellation, money back etc.) and the widest possible option of going from city A to city B because of iXiGO’s unique ability to cross-combine results across various airlines through multiple “hubs”.  A generic search from Bangalore to Ranchi across various portals would clearly bring this out.

 

ACEXC: How will the companies like yours, operating in the online travel segment impact the growth of the air travel market? What are the trends you foresee?

 

Dharmendra Yashovardhan: I see the following key trends emerging in the online travel space:

·         Increasing number of online travel vendors

·         Increasing propensity to search and buy travel online

·         Greater acceptance of “collaborative” internet

·         Increasing supplier preference towards direct distribution

 

Tools like iXiGO.com are ideally positioned to help catalyze the next phase of growth of online travel through their ability to bridge the chasm between the consumer’s need to search for unbiased information and book online in real-time and the suppliers’ need to build a direct relationship with consumers.

 

ACEXC: What is the current growth rate and size of the online travel segment? What has been the impact of the global meltdown on your market?

 

Dharmendra Yashovardhan: The online travel market in India is close to US$2.7 billion in 2008 and is set to grow to more than US$5.5 billion in the next 2 years. The online industry as a whole has experienced growth of around 15% last year and is expected to maintain that in the next two years as well even in these challenging times. While the international inbound / outbound travel has certainly been hit harder, I expect the domestic travel to sustain this level of growth in the next twelve months.

 

ACEXC: What are the new products iXiGO is working on?

 

Dharmendra Yashovardhan:We have recently launched our International Flight Search engine (outbound). This was preceded by our international hotels search which offers real-time access to more than 200,000 hotels worldwide. We are extremely proud of this as we believe this is better than any other product out there, in India or outside.

 

We are currently working on a range of products and shall be launching at least a couple every quarter throughout 2009-2010.

 

ACEXC: Other than leading iXiGO, as Chief Operating Officer, what are your interests and passions?

 

Dharmendra Yashovardhan: I love catching up on my reading and listening to music when I am free.

 

 

iXiGO.com ® is India's leading online travel search engine based out of Gurgaon. iXiGO searches across multiple airlines, hotels, and bus booking sites and finds the best travel deals in India. Launched in mid-2007 by an entrepreneurial team of young IITians and INSEAD MBAs, iXiGO.com has been recognized by NASSCOM as India's Top-100 Innovator; Business Today and WSJ-Mint have named it among India's hottest startups for its unique market approach, product usability, and passionate management team. iXiGO is backed by BAF Spectrum, a Singapore-based seed-investment fund. For more information about iXiGO, visit www.ixigo.com.