There’s no app online on travel portal like MMT - I’m as loyal to as MakeMyTrip (MMT). Since early 2017, every single flight and hotel booking I’ve done has been through the online travel aggregator. (I trawled my inbox just to be sure.) I like the app interface and how MMT deals with complaints. I’m just one of its many fans, which would explain its over 50% market share. I may have occasionally checked out Yatra or Cleartrip before returning to MMT for the actual booking. But the rival that has the Nasdaq-listed company spooked is one that I have never bothered with: EaseMyTrip, or EMT. Despite all other tech IPOs from last year being underwater, EMT is up nearly 4X since its March 2021 listing, giving it a market cap of over US$1 billion. By spending half as much on advertising, relative to its gross merchandise value, as the market leader, EMT has been able to shun that one thing that is a lot of customers’ pet peeve the convenience fee. This has helped EMT maintain its market share at under 20% for several quarters now, proving that it’s no flash in the pan. But not all its tactics have been by the book. a well-reported feature to find out more, but this is how impressed a product manager at one of its rivals is:
“If these methods didn’t affect my company so much, I’d actually reach out to their engineers and congratulate them on this because this was clever and required a lot of work on their backend.”
