In a pandemic-struck year, BSE-listed OTA EaseMyTrip sustained a healthy EBITDA of ₹43.4 crore in the first nine months of FY 2021, compared to ₹50 crore in the previous fiscal. The company, which is due to announce its Q4 FY 2021 results in the next few weeks, expects its EBITDA for FY 2021 to exceed the previous fiscal, a top executive told BusinessLine.

EaseMyTrip has recorded the highest growth in gross booking revenue among key OTAs in India clocking a CAGR of 47 per cent over FY 2018-20, as its gross booking revenue increased from ₹1,945 crore in FY2018 to ₹4,204 crore in FY2020. MakeMyTrip, the largest OTA, grew at 20 per cent CAGR and Yatra Online de-grew at 4 per cent CAGR, over the same period, as per CRISIL data and the company’s RHP.

“We are the second largest travel website in India in terms of air tickets sold in the first 9 months of FY 2021 at 2.7 million flight trip bookings. We are the fastest growing travel portal having clocked 47 per cent CAGR from FY 2018 to FY 2020. We have always been profitable since inception in 2008, even in a Covid year with strong EBITDA. Ours is a zero-debt, cash-rich company with ₹208 crore in the bank as cash/FDs. Till we got listed, in March 2021, we were a bootstrapped company and have never raised money from VCs/PEs to fund our business” Nishant Pitti, CEO and co-founder, EaseMyTrip.com told BusinessLine.

Lean cost model

Asked how the company has continued to remain profitable in a Covid year, Pitti said, “We achieved it by leveraging a lean cost model and no convenience fee strategy. For instance, in FY2020 we spent only ₹27 crore in marketing, while competition spent ₹1,230 crore, yet we grew the fastest. All 350 of our staff work out of one building that is company owned. We are growing because of word-of-mouth about the fact that we do not charge our customers a convenience fee.Our basics are very strong. Selling air tickets, hotels etc is a commodity business, and the basics of this business is that you have to offer better pricing while keeping your costs low and running tight operations. We have stuck with this approach.”

EaseMyTrip is also the highest rated app with a 4.7 star rating on Google Play Store with 62,780 reviews and ratings as of Feb 2021 with 10.32 million customers as of December 2020. In terms of YoY growth in gross booking revenue in FY 2020, EaseMyTrip grew the fastest at 43 per cent among key OTAs in India, while MakeMyTrip and Yatra Online witnessed 18 per cent and minus 23 per cent respectively, as per CRISIL data.

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