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The Smart Techie was renamed Siliconindia India Edition starting Feb 2012 to continue the nearly two decade track record of excellence of our US edition.

November - 2009 - issue > Top 25 Most Promising E-Commerce Companies

yatra.com: Growing Strong

Benny Thomas
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Benny Thomas
For those looking out for the best travel deals, the Internet is one place that offers a number of options through a host of travel portals. Yatra.com is one such portal offering pricing, availability and booking facility for air travel, hotels, trains, buses and car rentals.

Launched in January 2006, Yatra today serves over a million customers through its website, 24 hour call centre and 15 retail Holiday Lounges spread across India. According to Dhruv Shringi, Co-founder and CEO, since its inception, the company has created a niche for itself in the Indian online travel industry, which is dominated by three main players – Yatra.com, Cleartrip.com and Makemytrip.com.

Shringi believes that there is a huge opportunity in India for online travel bookings, “The physical infrastructure is not good in India hence people prefer online bookings,” he says. In fact the company was started by looking at the success of the Indian Railways’ online booking facility.

Since its launch Shringi has led Yatra.com to grow from a three member team to a 700 people organization. Prior to Yatra.com, he was the Director Group Operations and Technology at the London-based online travel group Ebookers. He holds an MBA from INSEAD and is also a qualified Chartered Accountant. His colleagues at Ebookers, Manish Amin and Sabina Chopra are the other co-founders of the company.

In its ongoing endeavor to increase customer touch points, Yatra.com - that initially offered only online services - has started using the mobile and retail mediums also to offer its services. By using these facilities, customers can book their travel through their mobile phones or by walking-in to the outlets of Yatra.com’s retail partners. Also, the company recently joined hands with DTH provider Dishtv to launch ‘Travel Active,’ a service offering Dishtv viewers an easy user interface to book their holidays through their television sets.


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