More of GenZ flocking to Maha Kumbh; youth driving spiritual travel: Ixigo's Aloke Bajpai

Youth are driving spiritual travel in India.

Spiritual travel is booming in India and the youth are the major driving force, said Aloke Bajpai, Ixigo's Chairman, Managing Director and Group Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

More people in the 20-25 age group are going to the Maha Kumbh than in the 46 and above age group, implying that spiritual travel is not just for the older population but increasingly being embraced by the youth of our country, he said.

The Maha Kumbh, a spiritual gathering in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, began on January 13 and will last till February 26.

Bajpai added that solo travellers form the dominant demographic on the rail route, making up over half of the train bookings to Prayagraj.

Mega Maha Kumbh 

"Prayagraj is also my place of birth, so I'll be visiting the Maha Kumbh shortly, even though I'm neither in the 20-25 nor the 46 and above demographic group myself," Bajpai quipped.

Spiritual tourism, as an overall vector for growth, has shown remarkable potential for us, with many destinations such as Varanasi, Gaya, Shirdi, Puri, Haridwar and Katra recently seeing a 100-150 percent growth year-on-year (YoY), in train bookings, Bajpai noted.

"Even, as of January, we are continuing to see a strong momentum, thanks to the Maha Kumbh. Our overall passenger segments for Prayagraj in the first 24 days of January alone have grown 4.62 times, compared to the same period last year. And within that, though metros are playing a huge role as origin cities, origin towns such as Nagpur, Jaipur, Lucknow, Gorakhpur and Varanasi are also playing a pivotal role. Our flight and bus searches to Prayagraj have grown nearly 14 times and train searches nearly 10 times," he said.

Why there is a high demand for bus travel

For the bus segment's growth in the northern market, Bajpai said that there has been a 14 times YoY increase, as travel demand is high, flight travel is expensive and train bookings are not easy. "Then bus becomes the only option for hundreds of thousands of Indians every single day. And tapping into that demand is easier," he said.

Air fares to Prayagraj and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh have reported to have risen 300 percent to 600 percent as pilgrims flock in large numbers to take a dip in river Ganga during the ongoing Mahakumbh, a recent LoclCircles survey pointed out.

Consumers are reporting Delhi-Prayagraj airfares to be between Rs 20,000 - 30,000 and for Delhi to Varanasi between Rs 20,000 and Rs 40,000. Many fliers have been trying alternate airports as flights to Prayagraj sell out. A one-way trip to these cities under normal circumstances would be around Rs 5,000.

Along with buses, the travel tech firm is also experimenting with its train business, for which it had acquired Zoop, one of the leading partners for IRCTC on e-catering, Bajpai said.

"We have integrated Zoop across Ixigo and ConfirmTkt apps, and continue to see decent month-on-month growth in food orders. We are expanding the number of stations with our own delivery staff, as well as signing up restaurants and chains at more stations. We are also learning ordering patterns to anticipate demand better and identify what kind of supply expansion we need to get more conversions. Some of this operational intelligence will only get built out over the next few quarters," said Rajnish Kumar, Director and Group Co-CEO.

Bajpai pointed out that the company's business mix is moving in favour of flights and buses, and trains account for less than 50 percent of both gross transaction value (GTV) and revenue from operations in Q3 FY25.

In terms of GTV for Q3 FY25, trains account for 45 percent, while the flight and bus segments contribute 42 percent and 12 percent, respectively. "If you examine the contribution margin (CM), all three lines of businesses contribute more or less evenly in the mix: trains constitute 39 percent, flights 27 percent, and buses 33 percent," said Saurabh Devendra Singh, Group Chief Financial Officer.

AI focus

Artificial intelligence is another aspect the company is focusing on. "AI chatbot TARA is now handling 1.59 million customer queries per quarter end-to-end, without any intervention across the group. This is almost like 92 percent of all our customers doing reach-outs over chat," Kumar said.

"AI initiatives across the globe, like the recent development of an AI model DeepSeek from China, have shown to the world that more powerful AI models will be available at a fraction of the current cost in the future. The race isn't just about having AI capabilities but about identifying customer pain areas and solving them with AI capabilities, creating user interfaces that make those capabilities indispensable to the users and being able to distribute them at scale," he said.

Kumar also added that the reason why ChatGPT became big is because they figured out the user interface much earlier. They were more customer-centric in their approach, he said.

Kumar's vision is to have more AI agents across the organisation to help increase observability and make various operational tasks more automated and efficient.