India's Yatra Leans More on Freight Delivery Than Corporate Travel for Recovery

Transporting cargo rather than people sustained many airlines through the pandemic. Now Yatra wants to do the same ahead of taking the company public in India later this year.

The India-based online travel agency, which has 700 corporate customers and 38,000 small and mid-sized clients for its business travel services, is building up a 200-employee team for its new “multi-modal” freight forwarding division, where it will ship goods by plane, sea, road and rail.

It predicts sales will eventually outpace its corporate travel revenue, but this means making its platform work in a different way, with little cross-selling potential.

Like all travel agencies, Yatra's been struggling. Its failed merger with Ebix in June 2020 didn't help, while India was particularly hit hard as the Delta variant began to spread. More recently activist investor Maguire has called for its management to exert shrewder oversight of strategy, product development and capital allocation.

Yatra has just posted a $1.9 million loss for its 2022 second quarter, which covers the three months ended Sept.