 Now, let's move on to our last keynote session of the day with Mr. Prashant Pitti, CEO and co-founder, EaseMyTrip. Mr. Prashant Pitti is the CEO and co-founder of EaseMyTrip, well, the past 13 years of a strong record of entrepreneurial management and financial skills and 10 years of entrepreneurial experience in conceptualizing team building and raising funds. Well, let's put our hands together for Mr. Prashant Pitti, CEO and co-founder of EaseMyTrip, well, he'll be speaking on how to build a unicorn, listed and boost-strapped startup. Wow, so nice to see so many people after a long time. All right, well, super thrilled to be over here. I'm privileged to be standing right in front of you guys. A little bit about EaseMyTrip before I tell the life experiences which we have learned while building this company. We started EaseMyTrip in year 2008 with a meager investment of 5 lakh rupees and right now after 13 years, we are the second largest travel portal in India and we have opened up six offices abroad. Now, there are two unique things which we have attained in the last 13 years. Number one, we have built a consumer tech platform which is as big as EaseMyTrip without having to raise any money. We did not take any VC funding or PE funding or money from the bank. And number two, in the last 13 years, EaseMyTrip has never seen a single year of loss whereas in this industry, almost all our competitors have been loss making for the last 13 years. So we come out as a truly dark horse in the industry. Now, let me share some lessons which we have inculcated in the last 13 years of running this organization. Lesson number one, always start with the why. At EaseMyTrip, we come from an extremely humble background. We started a regular mom-and-pop travel agency in year 2007. This travel agency was created just to help people and our neighbors and make their itineraries. Now, we ran a Duke travel agency for about a year and that is when we understood the problems, the pain a travel agent needs to go through in his life. And we thought that using technology, we could make their lives better. So this is how EaseMyTrip was born. We were very sure of the value proposition since we were the customers ourselves. And this is how the company began. Now, for the first three years, we primarily remained a B2B company. And we met thousands of travel agents in the length and breadth of India and business started flourishing. By taking this route, not only we avoided fighting against the big giants, which were MakeMyTrip, ClearTrip, they all existed at that time. We also got those initial three years as a crucial time to build our technology, to build relationship with the airlines, to build our operations in a successful manner. The lesson which we learned from this was, try to find a surrogate in the industry which is overcrowded and you want to be there. The second lesson is, it's okay to not to be able to raise. When we began in year 2008, we approached quite a few VCs and told them our story of what we plan to do. And rightly so, we face rejection. The reason was, most of the VCs venture capitalists thought that B2B is going to be a dying business when people are going to start buying online themselves, so what's the point of building a technology solution for that? I think they were right in their hypothesis, but they did not realize that businesses can change with time. Now, but then after, after meeting three or four of them, we just stopped chasing them. We instead used our time to do the sales call, to meet the travel agents, to increase the business instead of making, you know, pitches. We roamed all across the length and breadth of India and businesses was flourishing. After, after a while, we realized that, hey, VC money, PE money is a good money to solve your teething problems. But it's not the only sufficient way to survive and score. The third is, the third lesson we learned in the process was to pivot on the basis of future, not on the basis of present. In year 2011, business was doing all right. We had about 11,000 travel agents who were using IsmaTrip. I think if I remember correctly, we were doing transaction worth 400 crores in that particular year, but it was still worrying us. We could also see digitalization happening and eventually we could see that the travel agent business will come down. And this is when we pivoted in the middle of being extremely successful company. We decided to open up ourselves for the regular consumers. Now, at that time, that change was extremely scary. We didn't know how to get people on our website. Since we were working only with the travel agents. But we thought that, hey, if we are dealing with the travel agent, let's say if we were getting seven to eight percent commissions from the airlines, we were parting away six to seven percent to the travel agent. And while keeping only one one and a half percent margin for ourselves. Now, we built our business, our operations, in such a way that we could survive in that one one and a half percent margin. So on the flip side, we saw that if we start working with the regular consumers, we no longer have to give them six to seven percent commissions, as we were parting to the travel agent. So we knew that what we had was a strong mode, which is that if a consumer comes to IsmaTrip, we will be able to deal with it profitably. Now, at that time, we realized that there was one big thing, which everybody else was doing, and we decided we will not do it. Everybody at that time was charging convenience fees. They're still charged right now. At IsmaTrip, we decided that we will not charge consumers convenience fees in year 2011, and we still stick by with it. It's been 10 years that our prices are usually cheaper compared to our competitors because we do not charge convenience fees. We didn't need to charge the convenience fees because, see, our operations were built such way that we could survive in just one percent. So now, our margins in fact went up to seven percent because we are dealing with the regular consumers. And then, we realized that we don't have to spend money on marketing because the word spread by a word of mouth. We got initial users for our evangelists. They told our story that at IsmaTrip, there is no convenience fees because of which our marketing budgets were almost penis, one percent to two percent compared to our competitors, yet we were growing faster than them. The lesson which we learned was during this process that sometimes you have to take harsh decisions for the better future. Now, the fourth thing which we learned during the process was to be self-disciplined and stick by the tough decisions. As the company was growing, we were running business profitable, but we decided to not to spend money on marketing and keep our balance sheet extremely profitable so that we could use it for a day which might come in the future. The company was doing alright and the basic principle which we used was that we treated this business as a commodity business and in a commodity business, the basics are you must keep your costs low and offer value to consumers on a consistent basis and if you offer value to consumers, you don't have to spend money on marketing. The other thing which we stuck by was to ensure that we respect the unit economics. In a travel industry, the margins are only 8%. It's not like an attic or a SaaS business where margins can be up to 100%. So you have to respect the business or the industry you are in and this business demanded frugality and we stuck by with it for the last 13 years. This is how we learned to grow our business while continuing with the basic principles and the right change. The lesson which we learned during this process was you don't have to spend too much money on marketing. The time and your users will tell you a story to the others. The fifth lesson which we learned was during the pandemic times. Like I can safely say that for a travel company, the pandemic was the harshest of all. Now and for as we kept our balance sheet very strong as we kept our free cash, you know, on the highest side, all that was utilized during the pandemic times. Now as soon as the lockdown was enacted upon, all the flights were cancelled, as we all know. Now our call volumes in fact went up from 8,000 calls a day to 20-25,000 calls a day because people were nervous of knowing what will happen to their refund. Now we understood that the concern related to refund was a huge concern and this is what we decided to do. Somewhere in the early part of April of 2020, even before we got money from the airlines to refund, we decided to use our cash reserve and refund money to consumers in their bank account before even we got money from the airlines. We depleted our cash reserves by 80 to 90 crores and we gave money in the anticipation and the hope that the airlines will continue to survive. Imagine if one of them, you know, had gone bankrupt. We would not have received that money. But in the anticipation that things will be all right soon, we decided to use our own money to refund consumers and that turned out to be a game changer for the company. For many days on the social media, is my trip was trending because people were tagging our competitors saying that, hey, my friend got money back. Where am I not getting my money from you guys? Now this turned out to be a really, really good decision and the other thing which we did during the pandemic time was, as soon as the second wave hit and as it was residing, we knew we had to give people more confidence to allow them to travel. So at Ease My Trip in June of 2021, we decided that if you use Ease My Trip to make flight booking and if you have to cancel it later because of any health reasons, whether you're quarantined or any health reasons, just upload doctor's prescription on our website and we will give you full money back, including the money deducted by the airlines. Now, again, I would think that that was pretty ballsy because we know that in India, how easy it is to get the doctor's prescription. So we were advised by a lot of people to not to go for it but we just thought that, hey, if you're trying to generally help people, the users will also reciprocate. And the data shows, we built in the contingency that around 30% of flights, which are 30% of the times when people are canceling, they will give us the medical prescription. But the reality was we got the medical prescription only for 4% of the cases, which I believe is a very genuine number. So just by putting the trust in people and giving them an opportunity to serve, people also respond back. That is one thing which we have learned. Now, the testimony that both these things actually worked is in that prior to pandemic, right now, I think the entire industry has bounced back by 70% as per the DGCA data. While at E-Smart trip, we are 110% of pre-pandemic already. So in the last year and a half, we have gained market share considerably and I would probably give credit to these two big changes which we have made. And the lesson which we learned is that it's the job of an entrepreneur to find opportunities in the challenging times because everybody else is going to be pessimistic anyways. This is a great time to actually find opportunity. I could talk a little bit about what is in it for the future or what E-Smart trip is working on right now. We recently got listed in the month of March, 2021 and the company is looking forward to expand in various parts of the world. We have recently opened six other offices. With this, you know, I want a little bit of interaction. If anybody wants to ask anything, I'm more than happy to talk. I can go on and on, but if anybody wants to have any questions or talk, I'm free to answer. Please. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Correct. So okay, so the question is that E-Smart trip names resembles Make My Trip and there is one lawsuit between both of us about the name. See, honestly speaking, sometimes we wonder what other name we could have kept for the company and of course we could have kept 10 different names, but we started as a B2B company. We did not start as a B2C company. Hence, E-Smart trip had nothing to do with Make My Trip and we thought it was perfectly fine. And in fact, now you could see multiple examples like phone pay, Bharat pay, G pay. Everybody is using the same thing. In fact, honestly speaking, I think in the hindsight, I could say that it was a good decision because when I just say E-Smart trip, I don't have to explain what do we do. It's pretty simple, right, of what we must be doing. So we don't have to make the market aware of what we do. It's, you know, it's the travel website where you could book your flight, holidays, bus, ticket. And I think there are ample of an amount of examples where people have the last few words as the same, but they all coexist. So I'm looking forward for that coexistence. All right, anyways, my time is up. If any, yeah, please go ahead. I'll try my level best, go ahead. Since you have moved into the customer B2C market, so what opportunity still lays with the B2B market in the travel industry? So right now 93% of our business is B2C business, which is direct consumers booking on E-Smart trip website or app, and 7% is travel agent business. The travel agent business itself is a dying business because you guys are not going to them. You're just directly going to websites like E-Smart trip to make your air bookings. However, we still think there's a huge opportunity. At the peak of our business, B2B business, we serve 56,000 travel agents. And by the way, India has 70,000 travel agents. So of the 70,000 travel agents, 56,000 travel agents were using E-Smart trip at the peak of our B2B business. Now, of course, that business is low just because travel agent themselves are not getting much air ticketing business. However, we wish to utilize them to make better holiday packages. In order to basically make a holiday package, people still want to go to travel agent and get their service. So we are enabling travel agent now to make a better holiday package. Please. Hello, I'm Rajesh Sagar. So as there are many people in the industry, so what is the USP of E-Smart trip? How you are better than others, one. And second, how you can lure foreign tourists to India. Most of the portal are doing business for overseas destination. How you can help Indian industry, like travel, see your whole industry to revive. And the third, there are new openings coming like Buddha Circuit, the government is also improving the tourist sector of India. Later with the Buddha sector and many airports are coming like something like. So do you have any novel idea about these things? Absolutely. So to answer your first question, we are offering better price by not charging convenience fees. And we are also offering full refund in case of any medical assistance. Plus there are many other technological advances which we have, but to the consumer, these are the two primary reasons why they should continue to use E-Smart trip. Question number two, how are we helping foreign tourists to come India and serve Indian economy better? In fact, right now what we did during the pandemic time was we did the opposite. We actually sent out emailers to all our travelers making them take a pledge that whenever tourism reopens, they should at least visit two Indian tourists location before stepping abroad to help our local, you know, there's so many travel agents, there's so many tour guides, there's so many local, you know, businesses which only depend on tourism. So we made 58,000 people take a pledge and we sent out email only to the frequent international fliers. We made 58,000 people take a pledge that they will visit two Indian locations before traveling abroad. So we thought that, you know, we did this about last year and I hope many people, you know, think about it, the ones who have taken pledge. The other thing which you asked was that the new airports are coming. Of course, India is a different ball game altogether unlike West or China, which is mostly saturated. In India, 74 new airports are coming. This industry is, which is right now, 15 billion dollar industry is going to be 25 billion dollar industry by FY25, as per Goldman Sachs report. So it's a growing industry. We are the second largest player in it and we look forward to continue our growth. Tourism, that government is opening single-video Hollywood movies location, best location about India. So you can try some novel idea about connecting these Hollywood industry with tourism of India. Thank you, we'll consider that. Anybody else? Yeah, please. Hi, you just mentioned you refunded about 93% out of your reserves to your customers. How focused are you on customer experience within your platform? What sort of technologies do you use? And how much is your new customer acquisition per month or per FY? Well, to be honest, since we didn't have deep pockets, we are, we have the privilege to talk to you guys because we put customers first. Rather than our marketing expenditures, we put consumers first and we try to serve them to the best. One statistic I'd like to share since you've asked, at E-SmartTrip, if you use E-SmartTrip today, your likelihood to use E-SmartTrip in the next two and a half years is 85.98%. It means 86% people will not stop using E-SmartTrip. This is, this is the statistics which we really look up to. This number was 83% two years back. Now it is 85.98%. And you know, I think this number itself speaks the volumes that what kind of service we might be doing to the consumers. All right, I think I am five minutes. You know, I have taken five more minutes. Thank you so much for listening, listening patiently. I hope there was some takeaway. Thank you, everyone.