yatra.com: Growing Strong Date:   Wednesday , November 04, 2009 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. Yatra.com provides room-booking facility in over 3,500 domestic hotels across 250 destinations in India. It also has international tie-ups with major consolidators for over 90,000 hotels across the world. “The prices are highly competitive and booking rates are available at the lowest rates in real time. We provide a best price guarantee for our customers across these hotels” says Shringi. The Chief Executive claims that air ticket bookings on the site give out the cheapest rates available in real time compared to other sites. Yatra’s investors include Norwest Venture Partners, Reliance Capital, Intel Capital and Television 18 Group. With its offices across 16 cities in India, currently Yatra has average revenue of Rs. 100 crore a month and a volume of more than 8,500 air tickets booking and over 400 hotel room bookings per day. Going forward, the company plans to spread its wings through its retail network. “We will continue to expand, especially through our retail network by taking the number of stores from 15 to 25 by the middle of next year,” adds Shringi. With the Indian online travel industry set to grow to $6 billion by 2011, Yatra hopes to drive its growth in this market by offering the lowest fares in the most convenient way.