Online Travel Industry in India – the story so far

June 7, 2007

By sinha

The online travel market, as we all know is overcrowded. Here is a quick recap of the existing players, what they do and their funding status:

OTA (online travel agency)	Funding	Investor	Extra plugs
FlightRaja (now called Via)	$5 million	NEA Indo US ventures (owned by Vinod Dham)	Domestic + International flight ticketing, bus ticketing, hotel reservations.
MakeMyTrip	$10 million	SAIF Capital Partners	Domestic flight ticketing, hotel bookings – bundled/packaged service.
Yatra	$5 million	Reliance Capital, Norwest VC, TV18	Domestic flight ticketing, hotel bookings – bundled/packaged service.
TravelGuru	$10 million	Sequoia Capital India (Sequoia Capital and WestBridge Capital Partners)	Domestic ticketing, hotels, cruises, holiday packages, corporate travel
Cleartrip	$3 million	KPCB, Sherpalo	Domestic booking, hotels, place information
Arzoo		Sabeer Bhatiya’s factory!	Domestic + International flight ticketing, Holiday package, car rentals
Rediff Faresearch		Rediff	meta search engine.
Yahoo Farechase		Y!	meta search engine – though not too sure why Y! is not promoting this in India.
Zoomtra		*	meta search engine.
Ghumo		*	meta search engine (for flight/train and hotel bookings)
iXiGo		self funded	meta search engine, read our review here.
ezeego1		Cox & Kings	probably the most relevant meta search engine.
Travelocity India	N/A	Sabre Holdings	Initial focus on hotel bookings.
Travel Chacha		*	Domestic + International booking, car rentals, hotel bookings, Packaged deals
TripMela		*	Focuses only on travel related deals
Meratrip		*	Main focus is on travel related deals
Airdeccan.net		AirDeccan	has a tie-up with TravelGuru for hotel bookings.
Indiatimes		Indiatimes	Travel booking for partner sites

‘*’ = lack of information on investors (if you have any info, please let me know).
Few interesting info (via livemint)

Travel portals in India did business of $800 million (of the total $15.5 billion travel market in the country) in 2006. This is expected to increase to $2 billion by 2008.
In 2006, India attracted 4.43 million foreign tourists; the same year, around 350-400 million domestic tourists are estimated to have traveled around the country
Air passengers in the country increased from 22.788 million in 2005 to 32.172 million in 2006.
Flightraja is already profitable and does business of Rs1 crore a day.
On an average, commission from air tickets which account for the bulk of the business are the lowest and range from between 2% and 9%.
For hotel bookings, the commission is much higher and varies between 8% and 25%

Who said Internet will kill the intermediaries? They are flourishing and are going strong!

Tags: airdeccan, arzoo, cleartrip, farechase, faresearch, flightraja, ghumo, India Online, Indian travel Industry, ixigo, meratrip, travelchacha, travelguru, travelocity, tripmela, yatra, zoomtra

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Siva on June 7, 2007 at 12:37 pm

Amazing dude!
You collated the entire info and a very nice presentation..

thanks!

Anonymous on June 7, 2007 at 12:39 pm

Man..I didnt know that there are so many sites to book!!

Shamit on June 7, 2007 at 12:59 pm

Great collection Ashish.
Never heard of sites like flightraja, travelocity, farechase…

good stuff

beachbong on June 9, 2007 at 9:03 am

Great Collection! Check here for some other sites – http://www.indianpad.com/story/2323

Ashish on June 9, 2007 at 9:10 am

Thanks beachbong..
Yeah, looks like I missed a few of OTAs. Will update!

thanks again.
-Ashish

Shantanu on June 9, 2007 at 3:58 pm

Excellent site, Congratulations on having created a great blog! I found this particular post very useful, as I did the one on Ixigo (which I discovered only when I clicked thru your post), and also the one on Webaroo/mobile blogging.

Ashish on June 12, 2007 at 6:07 am

Thanks Shantanu for your words of encouragement

GeoBeats embeds maps and travel info in it's travel video player on July 25, 2007 at 11:24 am

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India is the most preferred travel destination worldwide on September 5, 2007 at 12:35 pm

[...] Complete details of Online Travel agents (OTAs) in Indian travel Industry tags: indian travel industry, conde nest [...]

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Hi ,
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Grapevine News: An Online Indian Travel company is up for grabs. |Indian startups, India Business and Digital India on October 3, 2007 at 3:56 pm

[...] The travel company has a “verb” in it’s name (see the list of Indian Travel OTAs) [...]

Moksh Juneja on October 3, 2007 at 11:14 pm

that is a fantastic list!! Think even wikipedia does not have that.. have not add there!!

In any way, my question is you have included Deccan, but Jet Airways, Spice jet and the otherlines, dont they fall under OTA.

Are you taking the travel package seriously, let me know, will join you??

Ashish on October 3, 2007 at 11:22 pm

Moksh
Interesting qn – The reason for not including Jet/Spice was that they arent pure OTAs..but this list is up for upgrade. Will do so by this weekend..

Shabab on October 12, 2007 at 9:40 pm

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Regards
Manager