How Ixigo’s Aloke Bajpai Managed to Survive The Though Times

Key Highlights

Aloke Bajpai left his high paying job in Amadeus

Ixigo is one of India’s leading travel service provider

Ixigo released a virtual travel currency and e-wallet

Ixigo is one of India’s top online and mobile travel services and planning guide. Ixigo started in mid-2006 by IIT Kanpur batch mates Aloke Bajpai and Rajnish Kumar. CEO Bajpai was born in Allahabad and graduated from IIT Kanpur in Electrical Engineering. Later he moved to France to work for a European travel technology company “Amadeus”.

The company aggregates and compares instant travel information, prices and availability of flights, trains, buses, cabs, hotels, packages, and destinations. After Amadeus, he started pursuing his business studies at INSEAD’s Asia campus Singapore. After coming back to India, Bajpai met his then classmate Kumar (Co-founder) and they both decided to start Ixigo, a travel search engine website.

Bajpai left his high paying job in Amadeus and returned to India in 2006 to pursue his dreams. They rented an apartment in Gurgaon and build their office. And after working for one year without any salary or income they finally launched Ixigo.

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Founded in 2007, Ixigo is one of India’s leading travel service provider, and it has changed the way people travel around the country and beyond its border. They reached out to various investors but the deals were turned down in spite of an estimated growth of 1 lakh customers within six months.

In 2008, The company went through one of the worst periods. The company was in the death zone and they had some amount of money left in the bank. It became hard to pay off bills but soon they received investments from a Singapore based firm.

Later that year, In Series A deal fell through a week prior the money was about to hit the bank. The 25 employees volunteered to work with a pay cut and as a team, they proficiently handled things. The entire Ixigo crew went for it for the next 9 months. The company started showing monthly growth which helped them to set up another bridge round to support them.

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Currently, The Gurugram-based claims to have an estimated net worth of $16.2 million (INR 113.5 crore) for FY19. Comparing to the last year, there has been a growth of 65% from $9.8 million (INR 69 crore) in the previous year. The company also claims to have generated $214 million (INR 1,500 crore) in gross merchandise volume (GMV) in FY19.

Ixigo launched a travel search website that assists more than 80 Million travelers, proving them details and offers from 25,000+ portals and offline partners too. To improve its service and customers experience, Ixigo is working on new innovative technology like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

Recently, Ixigo issued a virtual tour currency and e-wallet for its users ‘Ixigo Money’. It works easy, first users have to sign up to Ixigo.com and build an account. Ixigo money assists you to score points over every deal you make, and it gets credited to your account straight.

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