Online travel platform EaseMyTrip is looking to acquire more companies in the current financial year to grow its business in other segments including hotels, trains and buses.
There are few more acquisitions planned in FY24, Prashant Pitti, Co-Founder, EaseMyTrip told Moneycontrol.
"There are bunch of other acquisitions in the pipeline. We are only acquiring profitable, disruptive asset light businesses and the ones where our strengths can be utilized by them and their strengths can be utilized by us," he said.
In the September quarter of FY24, the company has acquired 51 percent stakes in Guideline Travel Holidays, which is a cruise provider along with TripShope Travel Technologies that has a large B2B (business-to-business) database of Kashmir and Dook Travels, a travel service provider operating across Central Asian countries, Turkey, the UAE and India.
Also read: India leads in Asia for recovery in tourism spends, to become fourth largest global spender
The company reported its Q2 FY24 results and recorded highest profit after tax of Rs 47.18 crore, up 67.2 percent year-on-year (YoY).
"One factor that helped in the growth of PAT is charging convenience fees on some sectors in the air segment. EaseMyTrip does not charge convenience fees but as an experiment we did for couple of months," Pitti said.
He added that he expects the growth momentum to continue in upcoming quarters and the company is targeting a profit before tax (PBT) of Rs 250 crore in FY24.
The company recorded Gross Booking Revenue (GBR) of Rs 2,025.58 crore. It sold 29 lakh air tickets, up 2.3 percent YoY. Also, the non-air segments experienced
substantial growth, with hotel nights bookings increasing by 60.2 percent to 1.2 lakh and the other segment including trains, buses, and more, saw an uptick of 98.5 percent YoY, reaching 2.7 lakh bookings.
"It has been 2.5 years since our listing and every quarter our hotel, train, bus booking has grown more rapidly than flight bookings and this momentum will continue. In terms of gross booking revenue, we are 90:10 currently i.e., 90 percent comes from flights and the rest from other segments. In the next couple of years, we would want it to be 80:20," Pitti said.
Despite Q2 being a lean quarter for travel industry, air segment volumes grew 2.3 percent YoY in Q2 FY24. Hotels segment, which contributes 4.1 percent to the total volumes, recorded a growth of 60.2 percent YoY in Q2 FY24. Trains, buses, and others segment witnessed a growth of 98.5 percent in Q2FY24 This segment contributes 7.2 percent of the total volumes.
The company is betting big on the growing travel market in India. Total travel market in FY23 is estimated to be at Rs 277 crore in India which is expected to grow to Rs 404.5 crore by FY27. The online travel market is estimated to be at Rs 186.5 crore and is projected to reach to Rs 298 crore by FY27.
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