What We Built Is Sustainable, Not Glamorous

Stuart Crighton of Cleartrip talks about staying focussed on consumers and products in the highly competitive sector of online travel aggregators.

- Rajiv Singh

Steve Jobs is an icon for many entrepreneurs. We are fascinated by him,” says Stuart Crighton, 49, co-founder and CEO of Cleartrip, alluding to the posters of global entrepreneurs and their famous one-liners that plaster the walls of Cleartrip’s Bengaluru office. Crighton had co-founded the company in 2006 with Hrush Bhatt and Matthew Spacie.

With Goibibo being bought over by Makemytrip in 2016 and Yatra in the final stages of being acquired by Nasdaq-listed Ebix, the online travel aggregation space in India has seen a fair bit of churn. Cleartrip, India’s second largest online travel aggregator, has a 17-19 percent market share, and ended FY19 with an unaudited revenue of $100 million, 60 percent of which came from India; losses for the same period stand at $9 million.

Crighton speaks to Forbes India about the company’s journey, and how it is helping Cleartrip move into new markets. Edited excerpts:

Q How closely do you relate to the ‘Stay hungry, stay foolish’ ideology of Jobs? I would like to say I do. We’ve made our fair share of mistakes that have impacted us. We have tried to be honest and transparent, and help our customers solve problems. That has been the DNA of Cleartrip. We are simple in our approach, and thoughtful in the kind of products we go after. We wanted people to sample our products and give us feedback rather than tell everyone how good they were. So, philosophically, not talking much and working silently seemed to have worked. And over the last 12-13 years, we’ve been fairly true to that.

Q