Meet the man who never fired an employee and built a 5650 CR company.
1. After graduating from IIT Kanpur in 2001, Aloke Bajpai moved to Europe as a software engineer at Amadeus, a travel tech company. After four years, he joined the coveted Insead business school for his MBA. But things did not work out. 👇
2. He was rejected from all placement interviews, citing his inability to think straight. Frustrated with the process, he searched for the one thing that made him happy. Inspired by Shahrukh Khan's 2005 movie "Swadesh," he returned to India. 🙌
3. With his IIT Kanpur roommate (Rajnish), he rented a 2BHK apartment in Gurgaon, Haryana, to start his own company with just Rs 6 lakh in capital. In June 2007, Ixigo was born. 🚀
4. The idea was simple ⏩ Build a flight metasearch platform to compare and find the cheapest flight tickets without visiting ten different airline websites. However, building the platform and paying rent was impossible with Rs 6 lakh. Aloke had to do something. 🤔
5. With players like MMT and Ibibo, 75 VCs had rejected his idea. When he had almost given up, he received a call from William Klippgen of Singapore-based Tigris Capital. Aloke had to travel to Singapore but had no money. 😌
6. After borrowing from friends and family, he went to Singapore, where magic happened. On 1st February 2008, Ixigo raised 1.8 CR from Tigris Capital. When everything finally went right, the 2008 global financial crisis came knocking. 👇
7. As flights tumbled with no customers, Aloke had to fire people from his 20 employees, but they all decided to work even at a 50% pay rate. He grew in confidence and built for trains and buses. By 2010, Ixigo had over 1 million monthly active customers and became the biggest platform by traffic. 📉
8. As it aggregated data from over 100 website, Ixigo raised 836 CR from Elevation Capital and competitors like Make My Trip. But Aloke still noticed a significant miss in strategy. 🤔
9. 97% of Indians used trains and buses and manually checked booking status via the PNR number. By 2013, Aloke cracked the GPS technology and launched the Ixigo train app, allowing users to get automatic updates on train status without the PNR. And magic happened. 🪄
10. By 2015, the Ixigo train app had 1 million monthly downloads and more users than flights, buses, and hotels. As it scaled to 80 million users in 2016, Ixigo raised 100 CR from Sequoia India and Fosun at a valuation of 340 CR. 💰
11. Ixigo clocked 230 million users, doing an annualised booking value of over INR 5,000 crores by 2021. As it raised 333 CR, it listed with a 740.1 CR IPO on 18th June 2024, which oversubscribed 98.34 times. 🤯
➡️ Today, Ixigo has a total revenue of 655.8 CR and a profit of 73 CR. With over 480 million annual users, it is India's second-biggest travel platform. 💪
Aloke Bajpai has never fired anyone and personally taken a 100% pay cut first. After 16 years of ups and downs, Ixigo is worth 5650.82 CR today. 🙏
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