Inside MakeMyTrip's 'Travel Superapp' Strategy. Is it Doable?

India’s largest online travel agency, MakeMyTrip, is on a mission to become more than just a flight and hotel booking platform, charting an ambitious course to become a travel superapp. “Within travel, we want to be a travel superapp,” Rajesh Magow, co-founder and group CEO of MakeMyTrip, told Skift in an exclusive interview.

At the heart of this strategy is the concept of the “connected trip” — a vision to integrate these highly diverse and fragmented travel segments to create a seamless, end-to-end experience.

Magow explains, “Our strategy is that we are a one-stop shop. We need to be a connected trip. We want to offer every possible travel service or travel-related product.”

MakeMyTrip Co-founder & Group CEO, Rajesh Magow, will be live on stage at Skift India Forum in Delhi-NCR on March 17-18 to dive deeper into the online travel agency's plans.

The company’s focus on integrating diverse services into a single ecosystem reflects its long-term vision to improve customer retention and capture a larger share of travelers’ spending.

In 2024, MakeMyTrip saw double-digit revenue growth, rapid profit margin expansion, and share price growth outperforming all other major online travel agencies, according to Skift Research's report on the online travel agency.

Beyond Flights and Hotels

MakeMyTrip’s business was historically dominated by retail consumers booking flights and hotels, with the app being the primary touchpoint. However, the company has expanded significantly across multiple verticals, unlocking new revenue streams.

Speaking earlier to Skift, Magow had also said that the online travel agency would be resuming its attractions and activities product.

The introduction of myBiz for small enterprises, Quest2Travel for large corporates, MyPartner - a B2B platform for travel agents, and its latest acquisitions of forex company BookMyForex, car rental service Savaari and expense management platform Happay, all point to its expansion strategy. 

“There are new avenues of revenue growth opportunities that we've added in terms of either new customer segments or channels. If we compare our reach with pre-pandemic levels, it has increased significantly,” Magow stated.

The company is also leveraging partnerships, such as its collaboration with shopping platforms Amazon and SmartBuy, to widen its footprint. MakemyTrip powers flights, hotels and bus booking on Amazon as well as on SmartBuy. Additionally, its foray into travel insurance and other ancillaries contributes to its growth.

While the ambition to be a one-stop shop for travel is clear, execution, competition, and maintaining service quality at scale will be its biggest hurdles. 

The Skift Research, report on MakeMyTrip highlights a solid foundation while also noting significant challenges amid rising competition.

Challenges of a Travel Superapp

Magow acknowledged that execution remains a formidable challenge, “The execution aspect of that is a nightmare.”

MakeMyTrip operates in a business unit model, with separate units for flights, hotels, ground transport, and technology. The challenge lies in bringing these segments together to create an end-to-end customer experience. However, given the complexity and disruptions inherent in the travel experience, making this seamless does seem a near-impossible task.

“If I am just adding product icons on the app, and the customer experience in one of the icons is broken, then it won’t work,” said Magow. The goal is not just to expand offerings but to ensure frictionless integration. “From an organizational standpoint, working with a business unit structure and executing with agility and speed works beautifully. But the challenge comes when you want to bring all of them together and say: ‘I want to also have one consumer view.’”

AI and Data Science for Personalization

MakeMyTrip is also investing in AI and machine learning to improve both pre-sale and post-sale customer interactions. Myra, the company’s AI-powered assistant, plays a critical role in this journey.

“Myra is going to be an alternative user interface, where people are going to interact, ask questions, get responses, where we are also adding voice element and potentially, making it sort of multilingual,” Magow said, emphasizing its role in conversational commerce, customer support, and personalization.

Data science is at the core of this transformation. By leveraging user behavior insights, MakeMyTrip aims to deliver hyper-personalized travel recommendations, optimizing user engagement. “The real hero in all of this is data, while technology is the tool,” Magow said.

Data would also be crucial to help the online travel agency achieve its connected trip vision. “If I am able to gather insights from all the buying behavior of a product, I will be able to take the personalization and relevance to a completely different level, and then produce a more personalized and relevant response.”

The Global Playbook Beyond India

While MakeMyTrip remains India-centric, its international strategy is evolving. The company is targeting Indian outbound travelers, where online penetration remains relatively low. “Our international business is about 25% in value terms, and we see its contribution increasing,” said Magow.

The company is also expanding its global inventory: “We've been adding a lot more quality inventory so that our product becomes global from an Indian consumer standpoint,” Magow said.

Additionally, its operations in the Middle East, particularly in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, are growing. “We are also expanding in Saudi Arabia, which is in the works in the course of the next few quarters. We will be getting into it organically, like we did for UAE. The platform is getting ready with Arabic translation and other elements in place,” he noted.

Despite its aggressive expansion, MakeMyTrip says it is focused on sustainable growth. The company is not pursuing horizontal diversification but is open to niche acquisitions within the travel and travel-adjacent sectors. “Our strategy on mergers and acquisitions or inorganic expansion will stay exactly the same. If it’s faster and easier to buy than build, we will look at mergers and acquisitions,” Magow said.