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 12th, 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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