Ixigo integrates AI into core strategy for growth

Onlinetravel aggregator (OTA) Ixigois building an artificial intelligence (AI) first platform to cater to the travel needs of a growing cohort of travellers coming from beyond the metro cities.

- AKSHARA SRIVASTAVA

In an interaction with Business Standard, Aloke Bajpai, chairman and group chief executive officer, said that the company intends to look for solutions for customers even though there may not be a chance of immediate monetisation, a playbook that has attracted Dutch investor Prosus to take up a 15 percent stake.

With a 93.99 per cent penetration in Tier-II and Tier-III cities, spread across over 2,400 towns, the travel tech platform is being built for the “next billion users”.

“Our playbook is very simple. If there is a customer problem that’s unsolved and acute enough, we will try to solve it even if there’s no monetisation around it. For everything we've built, revenue has been a second order effect,” Bajpai said. Starting out in 2007 as a meta search platform for flights, it added trains and buses, partnered with IRCTC to turn into a full-fledged OTA. Then came the Covid-19 pandemic, after which it made its two big acquisitions, Confirmtkt and Abhibus in 2021.

After launching hotels on the app, the company debuted on the bourses in 2024.