Editor's Note

Nikita Zutshi

“When your values are clear to you, making decisions becomes easier.”

This is not just a coffee table book on GO-MMT values. This is a reflection of who we are and what we wish to be. This is a reflection of GO-MMT’s soul! Every story in this book is an expression of Go-tripper’s belief in our Success. It´s an instrument of inspiration for our daily lives: where values are lived, happiness happens and achievements are without limits. These stories will give everyone a sense of our culture—the ties that bind us together as go-trippers. When you believe it, you can see it and create it. Let us remember to keep our values close to our heart:

Caring – The most powerful asset we have is our People, help them succeed.

Creative – Be Creative. Think out of the Box. Roll up your sleeves and make things happen.

Curious – Ignorance killed the cat; curiosity was framed! Ask questions.

Customer Focussed – Always put the customer first.

Committed to Results – Accountability is the glue that ties commitment to results.

Continuous Improvement – Challenge status quo and discover better solutions.

And lastly, a shout out to everyone who worked tirelessly to make this book a possibility: Avantika Sharma, Vantika Sinha, Juhi Dua, Shuchi Singh and every go-tripper who contributed towards making this book what it is.

© makemytrip

Foreword

OUR VISION

At GO-MMT, our vision is to make travel simple and fun for all, and our core values guide us in making this possible. These core values can be seen in the projects that we undertake, and the way in which we solve
problems for our customers. They are a representation of OUR BEING & OUR DOING. Each member of the GO-MMT family is guided by them, each and every day.

BEING : I exist in the moment, with all my mind and heart.

CURIOUS

I am inquisitive, I ask questions to absorb, reflect and solve. I strive to learn and understand how my work is connected to others. I am flexible and open to ideas.

CREATIVE

I am inventive, I bring fresh perspective, I am experimental, I create new options and possibilities.

CARING

I am genuine and helpful, I support and empathise, I nurture and invest in relationships, I collaborate and co-create.

DOING : We believe that the only way to make something happen, is through action.

CUSTOMER FOCUS

We use the customer lens proactively to anticipate and understand customer expectations. We keep the customer in the centre of all our deliberations, decisions and debates to champion their interest.

COMMITMENT TO RESULTS

We take the highest level of ownership and accountability for every task at hand. We achieve superior results and execute well even in the face of all odds.

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

We make ongoing efforts to enhance our products, services and processes. We believe that incremental changes are the cornerstones of breakthrough innovations.

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The Power of Trust

Deep Kalra - Chairman and Group CEO

"The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them." --Ernest Hemingway

When I started out to build MakeMyTrip, I had underestimated how much money I would need to get things going. So in 2000, I decided to seek funding and met with Neeraj Bhargava from eVentures. I did not really know him, but over a period of time involving back and forth of business plans and documents, and numerous conversations, we developed a professional relationship built on trust and shared interests.

To seek funding and explain the model, I met him at a mall in Mumbai. I jotted down the details on a paper napkin and passed it to him. Neeraj went through it and he agreed to invest in my vision. He confirmed the 2-million-dollar deal by signing on the same paper napkin! As I walked out of Crossroads Mall in Tardeo, Mumbai, it dawned upon me that something huge had happened.

A couple of months later, not much had changed. I had my moments of doubt. Should I have done something different that day? A 2-million-dollar deal on a paper napkin, really?

Fast forward to 2019, and a lot of people won’t believe that the very existence of a company that now has 4000+ employees, was decided on a piece of paper napkin at a restaurant. Other than a few moments of uncertainty, I believed that Neeraj would come through and he did. And though one might say that the protagonist in this story is the napkin, I think the real hero of this story is trust.

The bedrock of all other values is trust. A mutual, unspoken trust in any relationship—be it friends, spouses, business partners, managers and their team—is what determines everything.

The secret to successful partnerships at work and at home is to trust implicitly and assume that the person you’re with is giving their 200%. That is exactly what we believe of our Go-Trippers. The day a new joiner enters the office building, we believe that they are committed to performing well. Now we simply have to facilitate and empower them to succeed. Trust begets trust, and that’s how magic unfolds.

Contracts and agreements are important. They protect you when things go wrong. But this one powerful tool—the ability to build a trusting relationship with your peers and seniors— will help you achieve more than any piece of paper can. The ability to build trust in your relationships, will bear fruits in different ways over the long run—some that you can’t even imagine right now.

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MakeMyTrip Makes a Dream Debut on Nasdaq!

Rajesh Magow - Co - Founder & Chief Executive Officer - India

“Integrity is choosing your thoughts and actions based on values rather than personal gain.”

August 12^th, 2010—an autumn day at 7th Avenue, Manhattan that I would always remember! It was 11 a.m, and as we rang the bell, Broadway’s Nasdaq displayed MakeMyTrip on all the screens. It was a proud moment for all of us, including the group of Trippers, families and investors who had joined us in attending the ceremony. To further enhance the celebration, we got a nice 89% pop on our stock the very first day! The group was placing bets on the closing price for the stocks in the first day, but none of us got it right because it beat everyone’s expectations.

We were confident of putting up a good show on the energy-draining 10-day-long road show marketing, but didn’t really expect the kind of overwhelming response we received. Then came a very tricky moment that tested our core value. The strong demand coming from our roadshow and the overall positive sentiment towards the brand resulted in our stock getting oversubscribed many times over! We had the option of raising the offer price—and our bankers recommended we do that—but we decided not to be greedy and instead, kept the money on the table for the investors. We believe that it helped us establish management credibility from the word go as we started a completely new journey with totally new institutional investors believing in our story!

The second core value that we have tried to practice over the years at MMYT, is to not only promote teamwork but also reward the team’s contribution. After all, it is team effort that helps companies achieve all important milestones! We had a wide spread ESOP program which covered about 70 to 75% of our people prior to the IPO listing. All of them benefitted a great deal post-listing, with the value of our stock increasing manifold. It was a wonderful feeling to see people using their ESOP money to meet their core needs including buying their own houses!

Today, all our decisions, big and small, are guided by the one principle of integrity over greed. The business itself is led by an overarching care for the customer as well as for every Go-Tripper. That is the foundation of our work culture. So when it’s time to make a choice, I hope you ask yourself whether what you are doing is right or easy. And I hope that the answer is always right.

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Values in Action

Vipul Prakash - Chief Operating Officer – MakeMyTrip & Goibibo

Values Define Character. Character Defines Culture. Culture is Character in Action.

Bhutan is known to be the world’s happiest country, which is what motivated me to plan a family holiday there in 2017, much before I joined Go-MMT. My wife and I, along with our daughters, were all set. The plan was to spend a week in Bhutan, after which I would return to Delhi for my work commitments, and my wife and daughters would head onwards to Sikkim to make the most of the summer holidays. 

From planning our trips, to booking tickets and stays—I had been doing it all on MakeMyTrip for so many years, long before I even started working here! In fact, Harbant and Deepika were my best buddies. This time too, the booking process was straightforward and easy. The summer holidays began and soon, after a lot of debate over what needed to be packed and what didn’t, we were set to leave for our vacation. 

Our time in Bhutan was truly unforgettable. Travel has the most special way of creating memories and strengthen the family bond through shared experiences of a new culture and place. I hope it was a great learning experience for my kids too! Although if I were to mention to them that they were supposed to “learn” something while travelling, they would probably avoid it like the plague.

After a week, I bid adieu to my family and headed back to Delhi as they packed up to drive to Sikkim. When I touched base back home, I got the news that there was serious unrest in Darjeeling, which happened to be en route to Sikkim. I felt a surge of panic flow through me. I immediately regretted leaving my family behind—but what could I do now?

In a state of absolute distress, I called the MMT customer care and flooded them with questions. What they could do to help my family? Was my family safe? What was the situation on the ground? When could they fly back? With great amount of empathy and patience, the customer care executive answered each one of my questions and reassured me in every way. I felt much better after that call. The situation was absolutely under control, and much to my pleasant surprise, I received constant updates from the team. I was informed when my family checked out of the hotel, when they were in the cab and when they finally boarded the flight back. The care I received as a customer on that day, fills me with gratitude even now.

Today, as a Go-Tripper, I see first-hand that this value is deeply rooted in the organization’s culture, regardless of whether the customer is external or internal.

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Each Go-Tripper is a Customer Experience Custodian

Yuvaraj Srivastava - Group Chief Human Resource Officer

“Every single interaction, the most minute details of the interaction you have with the customer, are an opportunity for you to create something remarkable.” – Joey Coleman

11.25pm: ‘Sir, I need your help. I am stuck in Lucknow and my flight to Indore has been cancelled. I urgently need to reach for an interview. I can’t reach anyone on the customer care line. Can you please help me?’

I had joined MakeMyTrip as the head of HR, only about six months back and late one night, I received this message on LinkedIn. The young man was panicking and seemed desperate. I wasn’t sure what I could do for him. I read the message and hesitated. 

I was new and didn’t want to ruffle any feathers. I could reach out to someone in the customer delight team, but would it be the right thing to do so late at night? It would be one thing to try to help him, but it could also completely backfire if we weren’t able to solve his problem … on the other hand, imagine if we could.

11.30pm: ‘Hi, I will try my best to help you. Can you share more details with me? Like your flight ticket and your mobile number?’

He replied almost instantly. He really was quite desperate to get on a flight to Indore and his problem seemed genuine. What else would drive a person to reach out to someone on LinkedIn in the middle of the night?

I reached out, a bit hesitantly, to Geeta Eral, the head of the customer delight team. I explained the problem and shared the screenshots with her. And then I waited. By 11.45 pm, a customer support executive had been assigned to resolve this case. I, too, was constantly in touch with the young man over messages.

At 4 a.m., I finally received a message from both him and the customer care executive, confirming that the issue had been resolved. The young man would make it in time for his interview, albeit a little exhausted by the events of the previous night.

This instance has stayed in my mind for many years for two reasons—it showed me first-hand what role we play in another person’s life; from helping them create memories with their family over a holiday or ensuring they make it on time for an important life event. The second big learning for me was more a realization than anything else. I realized that I was part of a company where customer ‘care’ is not just defined by a department but is an intrinsic part of its culture. Since I felt deeply aligned to this value on a personal level as well,  I knew that I was home.

10.05am: ‘Sir, how are you’

11.00am: ‘Hi, I hope you are not stuck at an airport again?’

11.02am: ‘No, sir, just wanted to say thanks for all your help that day. I got the job. And I am an MMT ambassador for life.’

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Go That Extra Mile

Rithish Saralaya, Vice President - Technology Development

“Persevere because on the road to success there is never a crowd on the EXTRA MILE”- Charity Gibson

Diwali is my favourite time of the year. There is a festivity in the air, laughter, cheer, and great food at every corner and of course a time for family and friends to come together and celebrate. It is also that time of the year when a large number of people travel home and getting a confirmed train booking is virtually impossible unless you book your ticket well in advance. And so, my team and I felt thrilled when we listened to a call from a customer on our Customer-Engineer Day (when developers listen in on customer calls). The customer was delighted with the latest goibibo train booking feature. She informed us that her family was able to travel to meet her on Diwali, thanks to our app’s unique ‘alternate availability’ feature. Let’s go four months back in time to when we started building these features into our app.

IRCTC had changed the game when it came to training bookings with over a million bookings happening every day. As an organization in the space of travel, we were also offering train bookings on our platform. However, we realized the booking experience wasn’t seamless, and there was tremendous scope for improvement- from payment errors to technical glitches. And so we took up a project to build features that would encourage customers to book on our app, making it both convenient and customer-friendly. We studied the different challenge areas and started working on building features to address these challenges.

The railway is a supply-short system. Customers find it challenging to get a confirmed ticket for their journey. In an industry-first feature, we worked on a feature that would provide an alternate option for a confirmed ticket on the same train for alternative dates but from the same boarding station. This may end up costing the customer a little extra, but gives them an option for a confirmed ticket, just like Tatkal. We didn’t stop here. We wanted to be exceptionally excellent by going the extra mile. We also created the availability calendar that gave the customer a view of the status within the booking calendar itself, in one click instead of multiple clicks.

It is true that in times of crisis, we can either give up or try to come together and creatively solve the problem. The availability calendar and the other availability features were helping solve our booking problem, but they were not enough. We created icons on the booking screen that would provide information like meal availability, whether the train runs overnight, cleanliness, etc.  The customer could also see the best available class without having to click multiple times. We also integrated WhatsApp to our booking process and here too, the customer would not only receive their tickets on WhatsApp, but they could also check PNR status, right from their WhatsApp inbox.

At the end of it, we nailed it. Our look at the book went up by 4.5X. Booking grew more than 2.5X, and we had 50% conversion boost. But what gave us the most satisfaction was that we helped, in our small way, to bring a family together on Diwali. 

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Treat employees like they make a difference and they will!!

Pratima Thakar, Director - Air Supply

"Talent wins’ games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships." – Michael Jordan

In 2012, Google decided to understand what it really means to have a perfect team? After studying 180 teams across the company, they concluded that a great team is where members show sensitivity, and most importantly, listen to one another. Google concluded that the most important factor in building a team is psychological safety. I believe, it is essentially also what takes to build a family.

How can you link safety, trust and dependability to concrete results? Very often, it is tough to draw these parallels, but as the head of airline contracting for the Holidays, at India’s largest OTA, with a team reporting into me, I can easily say that ‘care’ and a feeling of belonging, play a large role in making things happen.

As a support function to various line of business (LOB), my team has risen many times to face the challenge head on, in times of crisis. The most recent case is the Jet airways case. In April 2019, the team stretched beyond 16-17 hours every day to ensure that customer calls were answered to the best of our ability and we controlled the damage as far as possible to ensure our customers were not adversely impacted.

In my fourteen years here, I have learnt that the only way to align every member of the team to the same vision and goal is by creating the environment of an extended family. I believe that an internal feeling of care towards each other translates to a feeling of care towards customers. A feeling of accountability towards each other translates to accountability towards the customer.

Earlier this year, the entire team got together to buy one of our teammates a new phone - something he had been unable to do due to financial constraints. As is the tradition in our team, this was followed by a celebration. We found out that a lot can happen over a samosa party! 

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All you need is passport

Anmol Arora, Associate Director - Revenue Management

‘The only trip you will regret is the one you don’t take.’

Travel is not a necessity but an aspiration. We can live without it, sure, but the experience of exploring a new city or culture adds a sense of richness to our lives. Undoubtedly, it can even change lives. It can open our minds to stronger, better possibilities, create magical memories, or make us value home. As someone working in a travel company, making travel accessible for everyone, it is not just a job but a mission.

 My team and I had been working hard to understand how we can make International flights and travel accessible? Have we tried all possibilities? We rolled out a customer survey, and as a result of the study, we realized that ‘affordability’ was a significant concern. The price of an international flight ticket stopped most middle-class aspiring travelers to book. Additionally, the option of Easy monthly installments (EMI) had been made accessible through other e-commerce players on high purchase items like premium mobile phones, appliances, etc. But no single online travel aggregator (OTA) was riding this wave. That’s when we decided to jump in.

We decided to offer a whole bouquet of EMI options for customers. Other than providing these options, we realized that to get results, we needed to educate customers and use our creativity to create different permutations and combinations with various banks and create products like No Cost EMI. We also brought together significant banks for the first time for a Mega EMI Fest. We ran multiple single bank campaigns and big multi-bank campaigns on both MakeMyTrip and GoIbibo.

These initiatives and our constant commitment to make EMI a significant growth driver, resulted in the EMI share touching 10% of our international flights bookings, up from less than 4% in 2018. Not only that, we have now embarked on a journey to bring the next billion users online, and have them traveling with GO-MMT.

Today, we have enabled hundreds of Indians to travel abroad and realize their dreams. I would like to believe; we haven’t just facilitated someone’s first international trip, we have planted a seed, we have opened their hearts and minds. We have changed mindsets. We have reminded someone, somewhere that the world is your oyster.

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Get a room

Bhaskar Chaudhary, Director - Product Management

‘‘If you know you can do better. Then do better.’’

There is this one scene in the famous movie Jab We Met that always cracks me up. It is when the two protagonists, Geet and Aditya show up at hotel 'decent,' only to find the hotel isn't very decent at all. Cops turn up in the middle of the night, and they are forced to flee. It's hilarious, but it is also quite an accurate depiction of the times. Be it the suspicious flurry of questions the hotelier asks an unmarried couple or the reality of shady hotels in your friendly neighborhood.

If you've ever tried to book a room with your significant other, without a marriage license, it can get uncomfortable. As a marketplace, we understand this from both stakeholders, i.e., customer and hotelier’s point of view. Hoteliers are worried about getting involved in something illegal. And yet privacy for the customer and excellent customer experience is of utmost importance to us all.

As part of the hotel's product team, we decided to dig deeper into this problem and try to take steps to improve our product to make it more couple-friendly.  If they were going out there, scouting for hotels and then answering uncomfortable questions, why couldn't we create a product that allows them to book a room, in complete privacy with no one asking them awkward questions when they check-in?

We created a couple of friendly filters. Not just that, all teams worked collaboratively on a campaign called 'Get a room' to show customers that we have introduced a couple of friendly segment as well. We wanted to reinforce an overall positive message to couples who needed privacy. We built-in checks and balances with the hotels as well – to ensure win-win for both stakeholders.

We continued building further on the product. We wanted to offer a better experience. In the process, we realized that to grow our reach, we have to dig more also into our segments and understand personas impeccably. We could no longer take what we knew for granted. The secret to growth is continuous improvement.

A year later, we saw significant growth in the number of bookings by couples - almost 15 to 20%. This also meant that somewhere, a younger, millennial traveler who didn't earlier know of us, now was using Go Ibibo to book rooms. Just goes to show, a lot can happen if you get a place...and solve problems for your customers, together!

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On her own terms

“I’m not sure I’ll be able to do this.”

This sentence and sentiment is something that we encounter on most days. We all know that keeping your team engaged and motivated is the key to achieving results. And when your team is working alongside you, it’s easier for you to keep a pulse check. However, when your team consists of 750 women who are working from home, the challenge to keep them engaged and motivated amplifies.

We launched the Holiday Experts (HE) programme in 2011. Holiday Expert is a channel where we give flexibility to the women who want to work from home. We believed that these women could leverage their relationship-building skills, extensive networks and multitasking abilities to sell holiday packages. Our first batch had 35 women. And soon we had an army of women of all ages, from 23 to 65. Today, we have a team of 12 in-house managers who guide these 750 women across 40+ cities in India.

Trust is a key aspect of any employee-employer relationship, and this is so much truer for a Holiday Expert, as the HEs work remotely. Apart from communication around products and training, we are constantly communicating with the team and sometimes even with their families, to reiterate to them that we are all in this together. This line of communication is needed to keep them going, help them prioritize tasks in their professional and personal lives and incentivize them to stay on track. This is a unique model that solves three problems—we are able to bring women back into the workforce on their terms, its remote nature limits the logistical costs, and we’re positively impacting the bottom line too.

The biggest reward, however, is seeing the impact on the lives of the Holiday Experts themselves—through careful hand-holding and training not just around sales products but encouraging and motivating them to aim higher and believe in themselves. By doing this, we are bringing them a step closer to realizing their potential. The true reward is talking to a Holiday Expert who didn’t believe that she could do the ‘real work’ by just sitting at home, doing something tangible and rocking it. It warms the heart when another 45-year-old HE, tells me that she has bought a new car from the commission she earned or when they share their experience of believing in themselves once again, due to the success and recognition they achieved at work. This zeal and motivation is an inspiration for all of us.

The success of this programme is largely credited to the huge amount of value that these women add to our business. But to us, the true success of this programme is in the will and determination of these remarkable women, who make a comeback and fight even harder, every time they think they can’t. It is the stories of these women who want to have it all and of an organization who believed that they could. And together, they did it.

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Curiosity = Innovation + Continuous Improvement

Satish Mani - Senior Vice President - Technology Development

“A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there.” - John Assaraf

After several decades of hard work, today we can easily say that for most Indians who book flight tickets online, the first name that comes to their mind is MakeMyTrip. This is a comfortable place to be in. But like someone said, ‘For cool things to happen, you have to get out of your comfort zone.’ 

In early 2017, I undertook a project to go beyond the airline-created itineraries and started creating MMT itineraries. What did this mean? Instead of giving the customer the options that the airlines provided to get to a particular destination, be it domestic or international, we wanted to give them options that could add to their travel experience. This new feature would intelligently combine multiple city stops to provide customers with cheaper and better options. 

Like if you’re travelling from New Delhi to Auckland in New Zealand, a quick search for a New Delhi to Auckland flight will tell you that most flights go through Singapore and have long layovers there. If Singapore has been on your travel bucket list too, they can use the time between flights to explore Singapore by travelling on a multi-city ticket. This way, you can club two holidays into one, squeezing in time to explore a new place.

While a vast majority of travellers still prefer vanilla bookings, we have enough data and insights that tell us that a new segment of frequent traveller is emerging and he or she wants complete control over their itinerary. Our entire objective with this project and many others is to use technology to enable every customer enhance their holiday experience with this thoughtful mix and match. The idea being, adding value at every step and continuously innovating.

Fast forward to 2018, we undertook the challenge of enabling our customers to create, search and book one of the most complex travel products on a small screen device. It took us two months to make the product completely live for our users.

“My husband stays in the US and I travel there often from India, with my 3-year-old. The long flights are something that both of us dread equally. And at times, it became quite challenging for us. But using the multi-city flights booking option helped us both calm our nerves. I’m glad MakeMyTrip made it so simple.” 

This was an e-mail we received from Swati after the launch which basically made all the hard work worth it. We knew the benefits of creating this feature—adding more to the travel experience at cheaper prices, but this was one use case we had not thought of earlier! Positive feedback like this and keeping a constant check on customer responses further inspires us to keep improving. 

We always have two options. Either we keep doing what we’re doing and continue to do it well. Or we can be curious, ask questions and open our minds to more—this is what drives us out of our comfort zone and that’s where innovation happens. 

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The Journey Matters More Than the Destination

Arun Kumar Dudee - Director - Technology Development

“Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.”

‘Hello, my name is Rahul Sharma and my booking ID is ZX562847.’

‘Hi Rahul, thank you for calling MakeMyTrip. I can see that you have booked two flight tickets to Goa for 17 Nov. How can I help you?’

‘Yes, I wanted to confirm my hotel booking as well. Can you check that?’

‘Yes, sir. You have booked a Premier room at Hotel Casa … It is confirmed. Is there anything else I can help with?’

‘I’m not sure. Can I also book a bike for local travel while I am there through your platform?’

‘Sorry, sir, we can’t help you with that.’

For the past many years, we had been hearing the same story. MMT was the leader in flight bookings and our hotel segment was on a growth trajectory, but we still felt that we needed to address our customers’ requests that were not limited to flights and hotels. Customers wanted more from us. Customers wanted an experience. And as the largest OTA in the country, we needed to deliver.

When I started working on ‘Experiences’, the objective was simple— to deliver a superior travel experience that doesn’t stop at flights and hotels, but gives the customer all that they need when they reach their holiday destination. It was an ambitious project whose time had come. All the data and customer feedback was telling us that travel was no longer need-based. People were more invested in experiential travel. As thought leaders in the travel industry, we needed to innovate and the time was now.

As usual, our deadline was yesterday. How could we deliver the right product within the fastest timeline? How could we deliver this massive operational challenge at the backend, and create a front end that was simple and also exciting for the consumer?

The challenge was huge, but we operate with one simple principle—work on every project like it’s your baby. Take complete ownership and think like an entrepreneur.

Barely three months after we had set out, ‘Experiences’ was launched on the app. This was one of the fastest launches in MakeMyTrip’s history. 

But our job didn’t end there. We continued to listen to the customer and get feedback on the product. What can we do better? Is the product self-explanatory or does the customer have to jump through hoops to make a simple booking? More than the quick delivery of the product, listening to the customer and continuously improving the product has been our biggest success. Skill can be taught, but the right attitude of owning something from start to finish, and going beyond what you are expected to do is a habit that needs to be inculcated across levels each and every day.

The perfect product is like going on a long journey—you are constantly moving, observing and then changing your direction if needed. And a true traveller knows that the journey matters more than the destination.

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Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work

Aakash Kumar, Director - User Experience

“People ignore design that ignores people.” ~ Frank Chimero

In many years and many roles within the company, I have been a part of the processes and projects which have brought the brand closer to our customers. As a part of the design team, my motto has always been to put ourselves in the customer’s shoes and to make their experience on our platforms delightful.

I have been fortunate to be a part of this journey where we deliver various projects to meet the evolving needs of our customers. Back in 2015, we re-launched our Android and IOS app from scratch, within a matter of just 4 months. The entire process involved building features to enable our users to comfortably interact with us on their mobile phones. While this was a mammoth task at that time, we continuously kept improving our features, basis the customer feedback. And, this is still an on-going process.

As recent as 2017, we witnessed a change. Our customer segment was changing. MakeMyTrip was becoming a brand for not just the people in the larger cities of India, but also, Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. This posed a new question in front of us—how do we address this new audience? How do we make sure that MakeMyTrip caters to everyone, and at the same time creates a personal connect with each customer? How do we bring the ‘MY’ back in MakeMyTrip?

The vision was to make it a platform for ONE, but scalable for ALL. Our vision was to give a ‘personalized’ experience to each of our customers—to let them know that the app page was designed for their specific needs.

So, the girl from Bangalore, who searched for a hotel in Manali, would come back to the app and get more than one hotel option, according to her needs and preferences, based on her past bookings with us. It would also give her flight options for Himachal, cabs to get around, and activities to try, while in Manali. The entire team was aligned to work towards this single goal. Bringing back the ‘MY’ design was not only about visuals—it was more about creating the ‘MY’ feeling with the customer. Personalization was our main mantra and we’re happy to say, that we delivered it well. Now each time you open the app, you will find the page tailored to you and you alone, basis your search history and travel interests. We love our work and are always looking at ways and means of perfecting it.

The design team, which was once twelve or thirteen people, is now a strong army of forty-five members. This is a testimony to the value we add to the company, keeping in mind the voice of the customer. We are constantly working with different lines of business to solve problems—from tiny ones that might seem insignificant, to major overhauls like redesigning the entire app. We take customer feedback seriously and are always working towards making their experience better. If I were to use a Game of Thrones analogy, we are the Night’s Watch, guarding the gates of the North, reporting danger, problems and pain points, making sure there is peace maintained throughout the seven kingdoms.

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Success = 20% Strategy and 80% Mindset

Sailendra Kumar, Director - Product Management

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein

As I see it, sometimes at work, and in life, we get stuck in a loop. We get the washing machine fixed every time when it acts up, and don’t ask too many questions around perhaps a plumbing problem that causes these issues to erupt again and again. We keep treating the symptoms instead of addressing the actual illness.

At Goibibo, I was presented with a similar problem. Every day we had a daily downtime of 10 minutes due to payment gateway issues; much like the washing machine. And the easiest way was to just fix it temporarily saying “I can’t”, instead of spending time to understand the root cause and asking “How can I” fix the issue. The temporary solution was just that—temporary. We definitely needed to look at the “plumbing problem”. And, when we looked, we realized there were two issues:

1. We were dependent on a single payment gateway and

1. We were not looking at other payment options that a customer might need—like a UPI or other affordable options like payment wallets.

But the main issue here was that, we were not looking at the payment process from the customer’s point of view. We needed to change this particular mindset first and then follow it with clear & defined actionable. We needed to ensure that we never lose sight of the challenges coming from the customer’s point of view.

Within five months, ably backed by a team of talented engineers, we went live on three payment gateways (PG) and two PGs, only for UPI. We wrote a machine learning code to ensure if one payment gateway is down or fails, there are two other PGs ready to complete the booking. We designed precise tracking metrics aligned to our larger mission of building a payment system, keeping the customer at the heart of the process.

The result? One year later, UPI transactions went from a 12% to a 32.33%. The overall success rate improved by 4.5% points. Refund success rate improved to a 99.7% from a 85%. In January, we received the Team Squad Award for the quarter. Working together to create this impact has been extremely gratifying.

Truth be told, it all began with changing the mindset and aligning it to addressing the customer’s needs.

© makemytrip

Power of Choice

Apar Sureka - Vice President - Online Products

“How would you define freedom?”

I overheard a mother asking her little daughter as I was waiting to board my flight. The daughter, who must have been around six or seven years old, didn’t look much interested in having the conversation and wanted to stare into a screen, just like any kid around her age would do, I suppose. The mother repeated her question. Since August 15 was just around the corner, they had been discussing the Independence Day and its significance. When her mom continued pestering her with the question, she finally answered, ”Freedom means I get to decide what I want to do. And Mumma, I want to watch my cartoon show now.”

This little girl had nailed it. And no qualms, both her mother and I were very visibly impressed by the answer. The freedom to choose what we do, where we go and where we sit, is a privilege indeed. And today, it is this power of choice that we bring even to our customers too. As a part of the flights team, I was working on a project on ‘seat selection’. Essentially, we wanted to help customers choose where they want to sit on the plane, much before the web check-in.

Firstly, we integrated the APIs for our two most frequently booked airlines—Indigo and Spicejet. Once we had built the basic flow, we added other airlines too. During the integration process, we tried to understand the issues that turned up with the earlier design. Then the User Experience team worked on it and created a brand new look for the seat selection process for users. 

Customers were pleasantly surprised that they could now select seats without the web check-in. Moreover, this feature was especially helpful for bookings with multiple passengers as they could pick seats together. It was delightful to see the huge jump in seat selection in flight bookings. We even introduced this feature for most of our international airlines as well and the product was received well by the international clientele as well.

All in all, the focus on seat selections as a product led to a huge jump in the number of seats being selected by the users in their booking flow. This number has gone up from 9% of bookings having a seat selection to 60% in just two quarters. And it all comes down to what that little girl said about the power of choice. And facilitating that freedom for the Indian traveller is an intentional choice we strive to achieve continuously at Go-MMT.

© makemytrip

There ain’t no rust on the happiness bus

Anoop Menon - Chief Technology Officer - RedBus

“Small wins are a steady application of a small advantage.” – Charles Duhigg

There is something magical about road trips, especially when you are travelling by bus. It often gives you an insight into a place, like no other. 

Buses are not just a mode of transport any more. With redBus, we have tried to transform it from just a means to an end, to an experience, and an integral part of the travel experience. Imagine your favourite Bollywood movies with that fun song on the bus—are you thinking of ‘Hum jo chalne lage’ from Jab We Met or ‘Do mastane chale’ from Andaz Apna Apna? This is proof that bus travel can and should be fun and adventurous too!

And so when we decided to bring in a new spin to an old way of travelling, we asked how can we make it a win-win for the customers as well as the bus operators? 

Social proof, or user-generated reviews and ratings would play a huge role in mitigating concerns of safety, cleanliness and hygiene. So we created a machine learning model to help distinguish between the good and the bad. We created tags for what’s good and what can be improved. We actively collected customer feedback through follow-up surveys.

Research also showed us that ‘rest stops’ were an important factor while determining a bus journey, especially at night. Customers were also keen to have information around safety, food availability and restroom hygiene. We decided to use customer feedback and GPS data to populate information around this aspect of travel as well.

With the customer at the heart of our mission, we used technology and user-generated information to get more customers to book on our platform and change the way bus travel is done. Today, 70% of all transactions have rest stop information and 30% of those have user-generated information. Just one small change can create a big impact. When we look back, ten, maybe twenty years from now, will this be that small change that will revolutionize bus travel in India? We hope so.

© makemytrip

The Devil is in the Detail

Venkatesh Bhardwaj, Senior Vice President - Technology Development

“It's not a silly question if you can't answer it.” ― Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World

We were in the middle of two big projects –developing our IVR platform from scratch and a call centre agent tool called MyDesk. After numerous discussions that involved everyone from the coders to the product managers, the timelines had been set. Then one day, the leads walked up to me and took me by surprise when they informed me about a new technology stack they had created that would resolve all our problems. 

I bombarded them with questions. And it was like a long badminton rally between two greats. Just like the popular dialogue from the movie ‘Andaz Apna Apna’: unka ek sawaal, hamare do do jawaab! Except, I was the one asking the questions.

It was a supremely satisfying moment for me. These two guys had challenged the path that we had chalked out for them and came up with something completely different and innovative. Right from the outset, they had thorough answers to convince us that this was the best way forward. And as the saying goes, the devil is in the details—they not only did in-depth research but also personally took feedback from the people who were using the product and had plugged loops. Result? They had me convinced! 

I had a flashback of an interaction that I had with Deep in 2005, who was our Chief Executive Officer back then. We were setting up the India call centre and trying to freeze on the right telephone service to partner with. I was in charge of this project and was looking into multiple proposals from the vendors. It had come down to one and I had to discuss the case with Deep. The proposal mentioned some fifteen offerings, most of which looked average to me. At least ten of those were and that I was sure about.

When Deep asked me about the eleventh one, I was stumped. I didn’t have an answer. That day, I learnt two lessons. One, you have to seek every answer if you want to completely own something. Also, care and curiosity are two sides of the same coin. If you truly care about the company or the project you are working on, ask questions and be thorough in your knowledge. There is no substitute for knowledge!

In my 15 years of stint here, I think of this anecdote often and have even shared it several times. When I see the attitude of complete ownership and thoroughness in a manager, I feel like I have come full circle. Because if we can truly care about the job we have been trusted to do, excellence, thoroughness and commitment to results will follow on their own. 

© makemytrip

Mind Set is Everything

Abhishek Aggarwal, Director - Product Management

“Eliminate what does not help you evolve”.

There is a lot of emphasis on getting people to book that flight ticket, inspiring them to take that holiday and to further, simplify that process. But what happens when things go wrong? What happens when someone wishes to change their booking date? That’s where my team and I come in. 

On diving deep into this issue, we realized that our old funnel was really outdated. It required the customer to cancel a ticket and rebook it, when all they wanted to do was, change the date. The number of queries our support team would get around this issue were huge and our process was not built to accommodate this request by inconveniencing the customer. We realized the old system was leading to a lot of incomplete flows and the customer had to wait for a call back. In this age of machine learning, human involvement for something like this seemed inefficient, so we decided to solve this problem on priority.

The process involved building a new funnel by integrating the application interfaces from all airlines. This was no easy task but we had our mind set on making it happen. The new funnel went up in a record time and it allowed a customer to change dates instead of canceling and re-booking. This also had a monetary benefit for the customer as he would just need to pay the date change fee to the airline.

Moving from old to new always comes with its set of challenges. More than the technology development itself, it is the resistance in mind set that has to be dealt with. Gautam Malhotra, who was managing this project, brought together several teams to make this happen—from finance to flights, and also the different airlines on board, by constantly talking to them about the big picture impact and showing them the possible benefits.

Today, we are already seeing a tremendous impact. The new funnel is converting better by 3-4% points. The number of calls around this issue have dropped by 35%.

We are the only Indian online travel aggregator to have date change on international flights. We launched this feature on three international airlines in May and will be live on sixty more by the end of October 2019. So, while a customer’s travel plans might change due to any reason, we want them to know that we are there with them through the good and the bad; in sickness and in health! 

© makemytrip

Made for You

Gaurav Gujral, Director - Corporate Channel

“One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.” -  Henry Miller

While chatting with my daughter one day, I asked her about her favourite vacation moments and was surprised to find out that more than the destination, she remembered specific moments and memories. That time, I realized that at the very heart of it, the joy of travel is in the experiences and special moments that we cherish together. 

Intrigued by the same thought, I asked my colleagues also the same question the next day. While one colleague shared how his son enjoyed elephant bathing on their summer break in Kerala, another one mentioned sleeping on the sand dunes of Rajasthan under the starlit sky. Though it sounded like an ‘Incredible India!’ ad at that moment, but it wasn’t. India is truly a land of innumerable experiences and every corner of our country has so much to offer. This posed another question before us—While we were making destinations accessible, could we offer more to the Indian traveller in terms of experiences?

I am passionate about travelling and what I enjoy the most is chasing that feeling—of thrill, of immense bonding, of slowing down and experiencing something that takes your breath away. I wanted to make every traveller feel and experience the true essence of travel. I wanted them to know that visiting a new place and truly immersing yourself in it can leave you with memories that you can treasure for a lifetime. 

This eventually led to the making of our MadeForYou holidays product. MadeForYou holidays was a huge undertaking and I clearly remember the countless conversations with colleagues and vendors, followed by sleepless nights wondering how we can add an experiential element to people’s holidays. It was a creative and an ambitious plan and the challenges seemed insurmountable. Could we give a family a winter experience of actually creating a snowman at the hill stations? Could we give honeymooners an experience of candid photography along with their holiday package? 

We believed that we could and we did. A positive mindset coupled with likeminded and action-oriented team motivated us towards continuously innovating, improving and thoroughly collecting feedback from the users and customers. All this further helped us in taking quick and appropriate actions when needed and we managed to launch the MadeForYou holidays in record time. 

On the day when ‘Experiences’ were uploaded to our app, we sold out within the first hour. A year later, ‘Experiences’ were added to the holiday packages, and today we can proudly say that 40K customers have tried an experience and appreciated it. Above all, what made the hard work and struggle worthwhile is knowing that many families out there are creating memories and a little boy or girl will remember that they bathed an elephant or camped under the stars, even 10 years later. 

© makemytrip

Present.Perfect.Continuous

Vinod Asrani, Director - Finance and Accounts

“With great power comes great responsibility.” ~ Spiderman

Preventing fraud while increasing transaction and revenue, this is the unique challenge that is posed to my team and me daily. No business can ignore Fraud and associated losses. Risk mitigation and preventing loss through bogus bookings is no easy task. The risk team analyses customer behavior through payment logs and data to zero in on possible frauds and misuse 24/7. And yet, it is also here that we walk a tightrope - between a legitimate and not so original booking. Anything could go wrong anytime. We could end up with the loss of face (& Loss of revenue) if we cancel a legitimate reservation. And this is not all; we must also ensure that we are abiding by international Master, Visa laws, and the RBI guidelines.

In 2009, RBI announced mandatory 3D secure for all Indian merchants. We were faced with a new challenge. These growing restrictions started negatively impacting the number of transactions. Moreover, 3D secure was mandatory only in India - international transactions were still not safe. We needed a solution and fast.

We reached out to Paypal. With its vast and secure international network, we believed it would not only help us with growth in the transaction but also ensure safety. They agreed to partner with us. The integration allowed us to accept International cards on PayPal leading to a surge in sales. The cherry on the top - We were also able to leverage Paypal’s special promotions and offers.

We didn’t stop there. As a team, we are always striving and are committed to continuous improvement. So, while we started this as an experiment for one line of business, we soon launched it across all other lines of business. Additionally, we came up with a combination of Paypal with Visa/Master under two Factor Authentication which started giving us a stable success ratio and fraud-related losses started coming well under control as we moved from quarter to quarter. Even Paypal was in the news as their transactions too grew because of the increasing traffic on MakeMyTrip and Goibibo.  Such is the power of continuous improvement and collaboration!

© makemytrip

Trust Makes the World Go Round

Dhruv Pathak, Vice President - Technology Development

They say that love makes the world go round. I disagree. It is actually trust. Think about it—all our everyday transactions are based on trust. You trust that the alarm on your phone is ringing when it should, and that the clock isn’t lying to you. You trust that the milk your child is drinking is safe and healthy. You trust that the cereal you’re eating has ‘no added sugar’. You trust that the guy at the petrol pump is filling petrol, and not diesel in your petrol car. You trust that Google maps has got your expected time of arrival bang on, and you won’t be late to work today. And if you are late, you trust that your boss will be too.

This trust is what ties us to our customers too. Just like any other service, the customer is relying on us to deliver on our promise. And if we don’t, in all probability, we have lost the customer. Keeping trust at the centre of our decision-making, we decided to build a community-driven content platform where travellers could upload real photos of hotels clicked by them.

The premise of our project was to create a neutral platform, where travellers could see the honest truth. This would help us manage expectations and impact two things— increase the conversion rate, and hopefully change the mind of customers who had a bad experience to make better, more informed decisions. In the end, it was not only about gaining trust but also keeping it.

The goal was aspirational, but executing it on ground was difficult and filled with challenges and frustration. We were coding a machine learning system to identify the nature of the photograph, in order to rank it by clarity and thereby give a complete picture to the customer. Like an image of a pool, the system ranks the clearest one on top by evaluating it through multiple angles. How can you get a coder to care about this? How will what they’re doing impact the company and the business? The only way to do so was by giving every member of the team a big picture view. 

The idea of the community platform was to build trust and experiment to see what we can do— other than offers— to increase conversion and win the trust of our detractors. In the end, our efforts paid off. Thanks to the efforts put in by each member of the team, at every level, there was an increase in 1000 room nights per day. Isn’t that a great way to measure something as intangible as trust?

I also believe that like most good habits, honesty has a ripple effect that can be seen over many years to come. This is only the beginning.

© makemytrip

To the Customer, YOU are the Company

Geeta Eral, Director - CCG Support & Fullfillment

‘When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.’ ~ John F Kennedy

In April 2019, there was news of Jet, the second-largest airline in India, being on the verge of shutting down and things were getting desperate. We knew that we had to be prepared for any eventuality especially with respect to expected surge in our call volume.

Our strategy was simple. Be proactive. We started calling customers, informing them of the potential challenge and giving them alternate options before an announcement was made.

On April 17, the announcement regarding Jet was made. Our call volume surged by 120%. We had close to 80,000 Jet PNR (Passenger name record) that needed to be resolved. On the part of the customers, there was absolute panic. As part of the plan, we immediately set up a separate desk to address Jet grievances to ensure they got the attention they deserved, and also ensuring that our regular calls went through seamlessly. The support team was working overtime to ensure every query was addressed. We proactively listened to conversations on social media where customers were asking about Jet refunds for flights booked on MMT.  We proactively dropped a note about the on-ground situation and the progress to them. 

Our timely responses and proactive communication turned customers into ambassadors as we saw instances of customers answering queries of fellow customers, reassuring them that MMT was handling the situation. Well-executed customer service encourages ‘customers for life’.  In moments of crisis, every member of the organization comes together, and this is a testament to our values of being and doing—a commitment to customers and to the brand that is Go-MMT. 

I would also like to share another small incident about an elderly couple who came all the way to our office as they were hard of hearing and not adept at chatting. What followed was a two-hour long interaction—the longest customer walk-in we have ever had. The reason it took so long was because the customer and the agent were interacting with each other through written notes! Their query was satisfactorily answered and they went back happy. Fifteen days later, they came again for another booking and then another.

The elderly man later sent a note to the agent on WhatsApp. He said that he had an adopted daughter from Iran, and had struggled for ten years to get her Indian citizenship. The day that happened was the happiest day of his life, and the day he met the agent was the second happiest day of his life.

It is moments like these that make you understand the difference we are making in our customers’ lives and how one great interaction has a ripple effect. The journey from customer focus to customer care, and finally delight is the most rewarding trip one can take. 

© makemytrip

Improve the Experience and everybody wins

Sohil Sharma, Associate Director - Air Supply

“Many will start fast; few will finish strong.” — Gary Ryan Blair

Picture this: April 2, 2011. Dhoni is on the crease. We are just moments away from winning the ICC World Cup. And then he hits a decisive six … the most crucial boundary in India’s history.

For years, we have talked about the openers in cricket - Sehwag, Sachin, etc. etc. - we were singing praises for them because they were such durable openers. But we cannot deny that the cricket team was missing a strong finisher. Enter Dhoni, and the rest is history.

I work in the airline's supply team, and my role encompasses both sales and post-sales. It’s exciting for me because I am involved in customer acquisition & building an experience that helps our customers to keep coming back to us for their travel needs.

‘Be a finisher.’ This is the mantra of the post-sales team.  We work with the customer and leverage our relationship with airlines to solve customer grievances to the best of our abilities. This is not always easy though, because we have to play a balancing role and manage our relationship with the airlines, resolve issues for the customer while avoiding any losses for the organization.

Relationship management is the core skill we have to teach, and at the heart of the building and nurturing productive relationships is care and empathy. Through humility, transparent communication, and productivity, we have created a positive relationship and inculcated a collective sense of responsibility towards the customer. Though we are focused on finishing strong; in our role, the means are as necessary as the end.

© makemytrip

Culture @GO-MMT

Amit Kumar Sinha, Manager - CCG Support & Fullfillment

“I cannot do all the good that the world needs. But the world needs all the good that I can do.” ― Jana Stanfield

One day, as I was going home, after an interview, an older man came towards me and asked me for help. ‘Son, please help me reach my house.’ He was breathing heavily. It looked as if he had had probably been in an accident. That day, I did not help him.

I was taught not to trust strangers. And why not? It is the harsh reality that in today’s world, you cannot trust anyone. But deep down, I was overcome by feelings of guilt.

“What if nobody helped him?”

“What if he was my dad, trembling in the middle of the road for help?”

The next day, I visited the same place to check on him but unfortunately could not trace him. Unbelievably so, I spent the next three years in guilt.

Later, I got a chance to work with Make My Trip. The first thing I did after joining was to fill a form for “Give India” – an NGO that helps those in need. In the past, I’d worked with a few organizations, but none of them had a well-structured corporate social responsibility program like MMT that involved employees well. Here, not only was the amount to donate was affordable; it was convenient too. We often do not help people because of the tedious process behind it. This little contribution may not have healed my guilt completely, but I breathed a sigh of relief. Honestly, no feeling is better than the joy of giving!

Through all this time, the culture of the organization has grown on me.  While most of us are frittering time away, I believe that the organization is making people’s lives better. GO-MMT has tie-ups with different NGOs, making its sphere of influence wide. It is a privilege to get an opportunity to be a helping hand for others. I feel confident that with the help of the organization and its growing network, we will reach out and help those in need. Whether it is Udayan Care, Sanshil, serving the blind, or planting a million trees to help the environment, it is gratifying to be a part of it.

Not only these, at GO-MMT, but we also come together to help a colleague or even stranger in need by raising funds. These and many other efforts make me feel good about working here. As a team, we have also contributed to those affected by floods in various parts of the country, as recently as two weeks ago.

I remember, my boss, Ms. Geeta Eral, nominated me to attend a silent protest along with thousands of children across the city to save the green Aravalis. So even if we at times, might lose sight of such causes, it is incredible to know that there is always someone to remind us to get involved and be a part of the solution. And this is indeed the sign of collaborative and positive work culture, focussed on growth for all.

I think back to that day when I chose not to help someone. But, today, I feel confident to say that ‘we’ are making a difference. The belief and value of ‘caring’ are very deeply rooted in the work culture at GO-MMT, and I feel proud to be a part of it.

 I am confident that I will take the inherent kindness taught over the years with me, wherever I go.

© makemytrip

Measure What Matters – 10X Growth

Manoj Agarwala - Senior Vice President - Inventory Sales & International Business

“We don’t grow by looking at past accomplishments. It’s what you do now that counts.”

redBus Malaysia business delivered a 10x business growth between Sep 2017 and Sep 2019. In pure numbers, this translates into growth from 1000 seats per day to 10000 seats per day.

This unprecedented success was driven by coming together of a passionate cross-functional team guided by an entrepreneurial mind-set, and a relentless pursuit of defined goals. The Malaysia business was launched in mid-2015, and as with every new business or market, it took time for things to settle down. By early 2017, we had our strategy ironed out following multiple experiments around Supply, Product and Go To market. We had our share of failures but what kept us going was a strong belief in what we were trying to achieve through a two-sided marketplace model in the bus ticketing space in Malaysia.

While the business was being built on firm principles, keeping the interests of Malaysian Bus operators and consumer preferences in mind, the learnings from our India experience were extremely useful. The Product and Technology team based in India gelled wonderfully with the Business Development and Operations team based locally. In spite of the fact that many members of the team had never seen each other (except over Zoom calls), the camaraderie and empathy for each other was palpable. The collective drive towards achieving goals was so high that every single milestone was cheered over WhatsApp groups even at midnight.

While the small Supply and Operations team held forte locally, a dedicated group of people at the India office across functions like Product, Technology, Marketing, Finance etc. were busy churning customer-centric products and campaigns to create an ecosystem that no one had ever tried before.

Today as we reminisce our journey, we can safely say that our Malaysia success story has been a true manifestation of how the value system of "being" and "doing" formed the core of our belief and actions.

© makemytrip

Be the Change

Nikita Zutshi, Director - Human Resources

“The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will change it.” - Robert Swan

As an avid traveler and someone who works for a travel company, we are so busy showing customers the beauty of destinations across the world and enabling that journey, that it is easy to forget the negative impact of such a life-changing experience. As the country’s largest travel aggregator, we have double the responsibility towards our travelers and our environment.

When I was first asked to manage Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and drive more impact through our initiatives, I knew that my greatest challenge would be to get people to care. Though the deterioration of the environment is all around us in the form of air pollution, water crisis etc., it is largely invisible to us.

In July of 2017, our team ably lead by our CEO Deep Kalra and CHRO Yuvaraj Srivastava, brainstormed on ways and means to make real impact through something which is both visible and tangible. We came up with the ‘Be the Change’ initiative. We realized that the only way to make people feel like they are making a difference was by making them accountable, and enabling them to ‘Be the Change’. This would be our mantra.

Despite my reservations, I was surprised to find that not only did people across teams (Leadership, Technology, Flight Product, UX, Content, Finance) work tirelessly to bring ‘Be the Change’ alive, they got the initiative LIVE on the app within 3 months. In the initial phase, we went LIVE on the domestic flight channel. ‘Be the Change’ was a crowd sourcing initiative where anyone booking a domestic flight with us, could opt to donate Rs. 5 towards this initiative.

Since then, the response has been more than overwhelming. Today, we see a 70% attach rate which means that for every ten transactions, 7 opt to donate. These funds, along with our company funds, have opened so many doors for us. Through our partners like Seva Mandir, Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Grow Tree and many others, we helped offset carbon footprints by helping plant over 1 million trees as on June 2019—a very special milestone for us.

We have adopted an island in the Andamans called the Neil Island, and with the support and collaboration of the government, the hotel association, and even the small kiosk owners, we have pledged to make the island plastic-free.

From Ladakh, where we work with Sonam Wangchuk aka Phunsuk Wangdu from 3 Idiots, and Rajasthan where we have created a green cover, to helping save the Olive Ridley turtles in the Andamans, and helping create a green cover for red pandas in Sikkim, slowly but steadily we are creating an impact and truly being the change that we want to see in the world. 

© makemytrip

Excellence is Attitude

Ark Mahata - Principal Software Engineer

"If you cannot do great things, do small things in great way” – Napoleon Hill

As an engineer at MMT, I feel proud of the fact that over time, we have achieved some remarkable feats like delivering the Lowest Issues per Booking (IPB) numbers in the industry, and becoming the first Online Travel Aggregator (OTA) to provide online date change facility for International Flights. Recently, we added another feather in our cap— the MyDesk application suite, which significantly helped us improve our customers’ experience with post sales services. 

To develop this application suite, we took help from the support team. We put ourselves in the customer’s shoes, understood their challenges and listed the best ways to resolve them. Leveraging this understanding, we created guided flows for agents as per varying customer needs. Through the app, we positively influenced First Contact Resolution (FCR), Average Handling Time (AHT), delivered a more thoughtful customer approach for increasing CSAT and also helped in boarding new talent and getting them up to speed super-fast.

But was there a way to measure the outcome of our efforts? Of course! A few days back someone shared a Tweet on a common WhatsApp group: Who does cancellation refunds faster? MakeMyTrip, Yatra or Ixigo? Every comment on that said MakeMyTrip. Needless to say, I felt on top of the world!

This journey has strengthened my belief that words like ‘customer satisfaction’ and being ‘customer-oriented’, become mere buzzwords unless we are willing to spot the gaps in our everyday work and step out of our comfort zones to overcome them. 

© makemytrip

I can’t but we can

Tajinder Singh, Vice President - Finance

“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress and working together is success.” – Henry Ford

When a crisis hits, there is a need for swift actions to be taken in a systematic manner. In a company with over 2000 employees working in multiple cities across the country, bringing about change is no easy task. In 2016, just a couple of months after I had joined, I was asked to study a legal issue being faced by MakeMyTrip (MMT). I took some time to deep dive into the processes to understand the gap and the best way to address the issue. I realized, it had to start from reworking on the communication between MMT, the customer and the suppliers themselves. As an intermediary, we needed to clearly establish our role in the entire booking process between the end user and the vendor.

While the actionable was clear, I also realized that the implementation and long-term change in the process required something much bigger - a mindset change and I alone couldn’t do it, I needed all hands on deck.

Transparency had to become the mantra, across all departments. Perhaps there was no resistance to transparency itself, but the resistance was to change. This is what makes changing the management tricky—it involves constantly reiterating the need for change, without creating a sense of panic. It means getting all necessary stakeholders on board. Through constant communication, we continued to clarify and emphasize that the change was to make the process more effective and efficient for the long-term, by establishing clarity for all. 

It was gratifying to see how all teams collaborated to incorporate this change. A deep belief in solving the customer’s issues, gaining their confidence and winning their loyalty, helped bring everyone together. 

© makemytrip

Investing in People

Asha Subramanian - Senior Director - Human Resources

“When people are financially invested, they want a return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute.”– Simon Sinek

People are the heart and soul of any organization. Stephen R. Covey said; always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers. As someone who works in the human resource department, we have to do just that. When you are in HR, loyalty, employee engagement and appreciation, these are not mere words, but an ombudsman. We have to be the voice of the people who define the culture of the company. We have to make sure we engage with each one, and appreciation and recognition is a big part of the job. 

Whether it is through initiatives like the ‘returnship’, a programme to on-board former employees, or women who have been on sabbatical from work, and reinitiate them into the organization; or something like the GoAlpha mail awards, which is an exciting new platform for recognition that we have started.

The idea for GoAlpha was simple - we wanted to integrate the family at home, with the family at work. The GoAlpha awards recognize top performers every month over email. The difference? Apart from a note of appreciation from the manager, there is also a note from a family member. This small detail, takes it to a completely new level. When a family member, actually writes, ‘I am proud of you,’ there is no other joy greater. 

Another example that comes to mind is when a senior manager, who had recently left us for another organization, reached out to me via email. After barely a month in the new job, he reached out to me, wondering if he could return. He said ‘It’s the work culture at GO-MMT that gives a sense of belonging. We were more than happy to figure out a way to get him back and so we did.

To be able to facilitate this, to find new ways to recognize the hard work, the investment of the talent that walks in through the doors of the office every day, honestly, it is more than a job - it is a privilege.

© makemytrip

Perseverance is the measure of your belief in yourself

Abhijeet Prakash, Associate Director - Product Management

Kaizen’s literal translation is: "continuous improvement." "It's a persistent desire to do better.” - Grit, Angela Duckworth

I have been reading a book called Grit, by Angela Duckworth. The basic premise of the author is that passion and perseverance trump talent and skill. She proves this hypothesis through several real-life examples and the study she has done over the past many years.

My team recently decided to dive deeper into understanding the various user behaviours and flows while booking flights. Through this exercise we noticed one interesting user behaviour: Users would change their travel dates or sometimes, the source or the destination to find a cheaper and/or a better flight. To do this, they had to go back to the search page. Now, we wanted to see if we could avoid this back and forth and reduce the number of clicks for the customer.

We also wanted to see how we could show a real comparison between flights on different dates or different airports to the customer easily. To do this, we decided to show these alternates on the search page so that the user could make the comparison on a single screen.

The engineering team worked hard to crack the right algorithm to get the best alternate flights. Data told us that domestic flight users were flexible for +-1 day and international flight users were flexible for +3 days. This was the level of detailing we had gone into, to ensure the final result is relevant to the user.

As we launched the feature, we knew it addressed a customer need, but listened carefully for feedback to make sure we were adding real value. We encountered a lot of customer issues. It seemed that in a lot of cases, the customer simply missed the information. I must say, this was a bit disheartening for me and the team. We had worked hard to make this happen, and yet something wasn’t right. Was this an experiment that simply hadn’t worked? 

We took this challenge to the design team. ‘How can we get customers to use this feature? What are we missing?’ The design team came up with multiple iterations and we finally cracked the perfect user interface where users could differentiate between these flights and at the same time, get to know its benefits.

For us, it was about perseverance. To persevere means to stick with it; to continue working hard even after experiencing difficulty or failure, and we did. Today, this feature has become one of the most loved and used feature of 2018 and also contributes to an overall of 5% of our daily segments.

© makemytrip

The Evolution

Vaneet Mahajan - Director - Online Products

“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds aren’t in your favour”—Elon Musk

Ever heard the phrase ‘like a deer caught in headlights’? Well, that is how we felt when we were given a goal of ‘personalizing the user’s hotel funnel experience’ in late 2017. The goal was certainly lofty, the problem seemed expansive, and all the limitations that crossed our minds were enough to overwhelm us.

Then I remembered ‘First Principles’, a TED Talk by Elon Musk, one of the most innovative thinkers of our time.

“When in confusion, think from first principles.” 

This is essentially the practice of actively questioning every assumption you think you ‘know’ about a given problem. Based on this, Elon had recommended three steps to problem-solving, which is what we decided to use as a starting point.

1. Identify and define your current assumptions.
2. Break down the problem into its fundamental principles.
3. Create new solutions from scratch.

Based on multiple sessions with various stakeholders, some personal soul-searching, and closer examination of digital ecosystems that had already aced the game of ‘personalization’ (i.e. Netflix), we zeroed in on the following fundamentals:

1. Personalization means that every user sees the right set of hotels that they may like to book, both in-funnel and outside of the funnel.
2. Personalization means that the users see the right set of hotels based on their previous preferences. Appreciation for personalization increases if people realize that their preferences define the set of hotels shown to them.
3. Personalization means that users get contextual information for their search, which helps them in quick decision-making.

We worked on the first two ideas and saw a fair share of success. While we had aimed to hit the bullseye with the very first version that we released, it was far from perfect. 

Rome was not built in a day and neither was our Personalization Solution Stack. 

The road that has led us where we are today has been long, full of roadblocks, dead-ends and more failures than successes. We tested multiple hypothesis and junked numerous data models before we were able to zero in on the three best models that served personalized sequencing to users. It was the team’s commitment to drive continuous and sustainable improvements that propelled us to a stage where we are able to make a real difference to both our user’s hotel purchase experience and our business results, with a cumulative upside of 20% in conversion.

Are we done yet? Not really, because we feel the journey has just begun and there are still miles to go. After all, at Go-MMT, we believe that incremental changes are the cornerstones of breakthrough innovations.

© makemytrip

There is Nothing Permanent, Except Change

Prerna Arya - Engineering Manager

“The world as we have created it, is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” ― Albert Einstein

If you think of the companies and leaders that you most admire, the one common thread that runs through all of them is their ability to not just adapt to change, but also thrive in it. As someone who has worked at GO-MMT as part of the hotel supply team for over 8 years, I am always in the thick of change. Whether it is the changing needs of the customer, the travel landscape or internal changes in the company, I often find myself at the helm of things. Therefore, it is my responsibility to make sure that my team and I understand this evolution in customer demands, and cater to it quickly, before it changes again!

In 2013, we had several complaints about hotel bookings done on our app. Customers testified that they would reach the hotel, only to find that the booking did not exist. This was a recurring problem, and hence we decided to get to the root of it. We realized that these discrepancies had become common because we were dependent on a third party for hotel supply. We needed to stop treating the symptoms, address the cause of the disease and become self-dependent.

What we did next was a mammoth task, but today Goibibo has its own hotel supply. I take pride in what we were able to achieve as a team by keeping our eye on the prize, and fearlessly creating something from scratch. Change means constantly updating and improving to cater to your customer’s needs, rather than just solving issues when they arise. With the same spirit of fearlessness and innovation, we went on to launch several new features like ‘midnight check-in’ for those travelling at odd hours, and ‘cart booking’ which allows customers to book rooms in a hotel, irrespective of room types.

Continuous improvement is the key to staying on track and sustaining excellence, and I am glad to be part of an organization that thrives on this belief. Here’s to the next adventure!

© makemytrip

Never Say Never

Divya Verma - Manager - Domestic Key Accounts

“Never say never, because limits, like fears, are often just an illusion.” – Michael Jordan

We often have set notions about what we think the customer wants. For many years, we had assumed that the luxury segment in India was niche, and that only a premium traveller would want to live in luxury accommodations. Hence, we thought that the high price point was always going to be a problem for us. 

As little as a few months ago, luxury hotels were a relatively uncharted territory for us, and we were far from exploring its true potential. Based on customer interviews and personal interactions, we realized that the constantly evolving consumer desired to experience truly unique luxury properties, which were a name in themselves. All we had to do was sweeten the deal a bit and with the right mix of supply, product, revenue and marketing, we could make luxury accessible to all!

This was something we had never thought of before. However, we did not let past trends hold us back. Instead, we started working on the high-hanging fruit—the super-premium Oberoi Vilas, where we were not even selling one room night a day. We asked for a chance to sell these hotels by experimenting with certain offers. The timing was right, as these hotels were witnessing a decline in inbound traffic and a fall in overall revenue. The hotels took a chance on us, and it paid off. We recorded a year-on-year growth of 552% with these hotels. The secret sauce? We marketed these offers to the right audience, invested in the right offers and truly made a mark for ourselves with the hotel chain. 

The voice of the customer is key and we were listening. Premium can be affordable and when aspirations run high, it only takes a little bit of effort to go the extra mile and make the impossible happen!

© makemytrip

The Employer Brand Advantage

Mohit Jaggi - Senior Manager - Human Resources

“Today people are the most effective marketing channel of your brand.“

An organisation is only as strong as its people is. An organization cannot succeed without the success of its people, so it is imperative that we pick the right people.

A big part of my role is to define and drive Employer Branding at MakeMyTrip. As a team, we are looking for the best fit, one who will instinctively understand the values that we stand for, grow with us and also help take the organization to new heights. This is not an easy task.

In our attempt to attract the right talent pool, we decided to revamp our Careers page. We wanted prospective candidates to come to our site and understand our legacy, our values, and the history of a nineteen-year young organization that employs 3000+ people all over the country. We wanted to set the expectations right from the word go.

We decided that the careers page had to be both informative and engaging. We created a microsite that talks in depth about our values, success stories, our legacy and our strong belief in making tourism responsible and sustainable. Through real pictures and videos of our employees in our office, we tried to show what working at MakeMyTrip entails. Our objective was to help a candidate visualize what it means to be part of the team.

We believe that innovation is at the heart of what we do - and want to attract product managers who are passionate about creating something new, and working on incremental improvements. We highlighted the hackathons, the campus recruitments, the projects and growth opportunities as ‘Tech is at the heart of what we do’. Therefore, a big part of our revamp focussed on technology and innovation at MakeMyTrip.

The revamping of the website was also a great learning for the team as it made us reflect on the values that are at the heart of the organization. By altering the smallest of details, we could make a big impact. For e.g., we redefined the format of job description. We called these Opportunity Profiles (Ops) where the business leader to senior engineers and stakeholders, everyone shares a crisp snapshot of the expectation and vision for the said role. This small tweak not only helps us assess candidates in a more efficient manner, but also prepares them to put their best foot forward in an interview.

So how do we measure success? In the first four month of the launch of the new career website, we saw time-to-fill drop 47 percent, to 52.5 days, and cost-per-hire fall more than 60 percent. Other positive changes included a 123 percent increase in traffic to our career site, 162 percent increase in click-thrus to online job applications and a drop in applications needed to generate a hire, from 280 to 126.

© makemytrip

Focus on the outcome, not the obstacles.

Juhi Dua - Head - Content

“Challenges are bound to come to you. That is inevitable. However, being defeated is often a choice YOU make.”

In the spring of 2018, we were presented with a challenge. The Hotels Business needed to be strengthened with individual videos for all premium hotels, to enhance customer’s decision-making ease while booking. We were looking at a scale of over a 1000 videos and needed to create a prototype at the earliest. A couple of earlier prototypes had been rejected, so we knew what not to do, but to define what had to be done. We set out to do the needful, immensely excited at the creative scope of the project.

The prototype had to be created keeping budget and scalability in mind, and that did pose some limitations. We found ourselves experimenting, stumbling, and learning. However, one thing that helped us stay on track was our staunch Customer Focus. We looked at whatever we were creating through the customer lens. “If we were booking this hotel, would this film answer all our concerns?” We continued to ask this question until we completed our set of sample films.

Sample films were approved in one shot and then came the second challenge—we were asked to deliver first 100 films in a month. There was no doubt that this additional project target had to be delivered to perfection—come what may.

We had devised script formats that were engaging and informative, while being scalable and budget-friendly at the same time. We put stringent quality control measures in place to ensure that each script that we wrote in-house translated into a video that would add real value to the user. Despite the volumes we were about to produce, we wanted to maintain consistency in tone, voice and structure throughout. We delivered 104 videos in the first month itself. Our unstinted Commitment to Results showed us the path, and kept us moving steadily towards the final goal.

Within the very first month of the videos going live, the revenue team measured a neat spike in bookings and we went on to create over 1100 films, covering all key 4 and 5-star properties featured on the MakeMyTrip platforms. What we have also learnt is—Sometimes challenges come to you, sometimes you go and woo them. Now, we have taken up the responsibility of creating films for our massive Alt Accomodation Inventory. We have delivered the first 60 films already, and it has been a whole lot of fun. Yes, we as a team, always say, “Bring it on!” 

© makemytrip