No Flights Of Fancy

Ebix has gone from strength to strength in the last two decades under CEO Robin Raina’s charge. With the latest Yatra acquisition, the group hopes to be a leader in the travel domain as well

- Suman K. Jha

IF ONE WERE TO TRAVEL FROM DELHI to London, one would need a visa, airline tickets, hotels, travel insurance, health insurance, forex, cabs on both sides, and a few other sundry services. Naturally, one would have to requisition the services of three to four companies for the round trip. It’s a business opportunity that Ebix has capitalized on – it offers all these services at one go.

With no real competition that matches the expanse of its vision, Ebix has positioned itself to seize an ‘ideal greenfield opportunity’, says a vision statement. It is a leading international supplier of on-demand software and e-commerce services to the insurance, financial and healthcare industries. Ebix aspires to become the world’s largest fin-tech player that can “converge all financial and insurance services”. In financial systems alone, EbixCash, its Indian subsidiary, today handles a gross merchandise value (GMV) of $15 billion. Add to the bouquet travel and healthcare, and it’s a company that is giving a shareholder return of 26,500 percent!

Coinciding with the Ebix journey in the last two decades is the journey of Robin Raina, its flamboyant CEO and Group Chairman, who took over in 2000, and never looked back.

When he joined the company in 1999 (he was elevated as its CEO in 2000 December), Ebix was reasonably small — it had logged $11 million in revenues with $19 million of losses.

Since then, the company has had 20 years (and 80 quarters) of sequential growth, and it has often featured amongst the fastest-growing companies globally.