for travel portal ixigo, to be public The best option as it not only lets investors exit but also allows clients and other stakeholders to hold shares in the company and grow with it, cofounder Alok Bajpayee Told in an interview to ET.
Bajpayee, with co-founder Rajnish Kumar,
Recently won in the Comeback Kid category at the Economic Times Startup Awards 2021.
According to Bajpai, even if private investors of Ixigo were ready to double down with the new cheque, tapping the public markets would give it a longer runway to access a wider capital pool and it would not face liquidity crunch in the long run. .
the company
Filed an IPO of $ 215 million (about Rs 1,600 crore).
Bajpai said this reflects the DNA and culture of the Gurugram-based startup, which has gone through several cycles of ups and downs.
“Going public was the best option for us, according to the DNA we created. Even if you don’t want to exit, you want your investors to exit. But you want to do it in such a way that in the process, you also give the overall market, who are also our customers, an opportunity to play with us and grow,” Bajpai said.
Ixigo is awaiting approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India to proceed with the IPO.
“If you look at the way we’ve built the business, we’ve been patient for a long time. We were in no hurry to get a definite result or a definitive assessment,” Bajpai told ET.
In August, the company
Raises $53 million from investors led by GIC It was valued at $600 million in a pre-IPO round.
ET has previously reported that the company is
Targeting a valuation above $850 million from your IPO.
Since inception, the company has raised $58 million in primary capital from all-round investors, but also made $82 million in secondary share sales, bringing the total to $140 million. This makes Ixigo one of the least funded consumer tech startups in India to tap into the capital markets.
In a secondary share sale, existing investors sell their shares, partly or wholly, to new investors and the money does not go into the company’s treasury.
Bajpai said that for the quarter ended December 2019 and the financial year ended March 31, 2020, ixigo was profitable even before the Covid-19 pandemic began.
“We were doing break-even operationally. Hence, capital was never a constraint,” he said.
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Bajpai, who founded the firm 15 years ago, had to survive two waves of Covid-19 in the last 18 months, when travel was one of the worst-hit sectors here as well as globally.
Ixigo also made two acquisitions –
confirmcut And
Abhibus — in the period.
Bajpai said that even though it was a tough time during the lockdown in 2020 and 2021, he was sure that the company would be the fastest to bounce back.
He described the start of the nationwide lockdown as a period when the company went through ‘a small existential crisis’.
“The first few days of the lockdown were very tough. We were freaked out and had sleepless nights. But then, we were sure that as things improve and the pandemic subsides, travel will bounce back,” Bajpai said.
He added that the company has seen several down cycles and is lean, financially prudent and highly customer centric.
This was one of the reasons why the company did not cut jobs despite its business being badly hit during the lockdown.
“Both legs of our business – air and train travel – were suddenly gone. Trains have been running even during wars, so handling such a situation was out of our playbook. But we were clear, we will deal with it with empathy towards both our employees and customers,” Bajpai said.
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Ixigo took pay cuts across the board to be able to withstand the setback.
“Rajneesh and I did not take home a single rupee. Our senior management also took deep cuts, leaving up to 75-80% of the salary. But we decided to keep everyone and ensure that all hands are on deck to fight the crisis,” he said.
The company refunded the convenience fee to the customers which it had charged for the transaction. This, he said, helped the customers to come out in the rush when the journey started.
Bajpai said that by MAU (Monthly Active User) Ixigo is the largest OTA (Online Travel Agency) platform in the country and downloads as compared to peers selling air, train and bus tickets.
It competes with MakeMyTrip, EaseMyTrip, IRCTC and Oyo Hotels & Homes among others.
In terms of business recovery after the second wave of the covid-19 pandemic, Bajpai said that the gross transaction value (GTV) on Ixigo returned to pre-Covid-19 levels of 1.46 times in the fourth quarter of 2021.
Bajpai is expecting GTV to grow manifold by the end of 2022 as travel (both domestic and international) is expected to make a strong comeback by the end of next year.
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