Ixigo Makes Quarterly Gains in Flights and Spiritual Tourism

Like other travel players such as MakeMyTrip and the Indian Hotels Co., Ixigo is taking advantage of the spiritual tourism trend in the quarter that end December 31.

In its fiscal year 2025 third quarter earnings call Tuesday, the company noted that bookings to spiritual destinations such as Varanasi, Gaya, Shirdi, Puri, Haridwar, and Vaishno Devi were up 100-150% year-on-year.

In fact, advance purchases leading up to the Mahakumbh religious gathering in Prayagraj, which takes place in January and February, also contributed to the success, Saurabh Devendra Singh, Group CFO said. Passenger segments booked for Prayagraj and adjacent towns increased 4.62 times year-on-year in January this year. Flight and bus searches for the city increased 14 times, Ixigo noted. 

This segment is expected to have momentum as Ixigo noted that more people in the 20 to 29 age group were traveling to Mahakumbh than the 46 years and older category. 

“This indicates that spiritual travel is not just a phenomenon for the older population. Solo travelers are the dominant demographic on the plane side, taking up over half of the flight bookings to Prayagraj,” Group CEO Aloke Bajpai said.

Setting Records for Ixigo

The October to December 2024 quarter has been the best ever for online travel platform Ixigo, driven by the flights business as well as the booming spiritual tourism segment. 

The online travel agency recorded its all-time high in monthly active users, gross transaction value, and revenue from operations, while gaining market share across all lines of business, Bajpai and Group Co-CEO Rajnish Kumar said during the call with analysts. The revenue from operations increased by 42% year-on-year, while the GTV rose by 48%. 

The gross transaction value from flight business increased by 73% year-on-year during the quarter.

Profits after tax for the quarter fell 49% year over year to INR 155.40 ($1.8 million).

“Our flight and bus businesses have achieved decent product-market fit in recent years and have built solid unit economics already giving us enough room to experiment on more growth initiatives,” Kumar said. 

Apart from that, “the market was also stimulated by the rise of spiritual tourism, a stronger wedding season, and addition of some capacity,” Aloke added. 

Betting Big on Diversification

Ixigo is hopeful that diversification will drive its growth. Kumar and Bajpai said, “With continued investments in new areas including hotels and AI-based agentic tools, we are optimistic that we will grow faster than the overall OTA market in the mid-term.”

This is in line with its growth journey. Ixigo was established in June 2007 as a metasearch website for flights, after which the company added trains. It was only from 2015 that Ixigo started transitioning to an OTA before partnering with Indian Railways-owned ticketing platform IRCTC. 

Since 2020, the company has been expanding its business with value-added services and the acquisition of train booking platform Confirmtkt and bus ticketing app Abhibus. It then launched a GenAI trip planner, before adding hotels to its offerings. 

Last year, it launched its IPO, in which investors applied for about 98 times the number of shares available.

Later in the year, it also acquired train food delivery app Zoop. In an earlier interaction with Skift, Bajpai explained the reasoning. “We want to deliver the best customer experience to our users. Given the fact that most trains in India do not have a pantry car attached to them, getting quality food onboard becomes a challenge. With the acquisition of Zoop, the number of transacting users will grow, engagement on our app will rise as users have another reason to visit us, and our overall revenue per user will increase with this additional travel-related service.”

Ixigo isn't involved in business travel segment yet, a move that differs from its competitors.

All of this is a part of its broader strategy that caters to the growing market in the smaller cities. “Our strategy is unique in the online travel space since we started by building a large user base for utility among the next billion users and when we became more transactional, we started selling tickets, ancillaries and value-added services to those travelers. We also started cross-marketing and selling other services to these travelers, with multi-modality options across rail, bus, and flights,” Bajpai said.