India’s leading travel platform, ixigo is venturing into supply side technology platforms for airlines through the launch of its subsidiary Travenues.

Travenues is a technology platform business for airlines and a subsidiary of ixigo, a Gurgaon-headquartered mobile travel marketplace. Travenues was founded by a team with decades of experiences across GDS, OTA and meta-search business and its investors include Sequoia Capital India, Fosun RZ Capital, SAIF Partners, MakeMyTrip & Micromax.

Travenues, which will be headquartered in Bengaluru, will be spearheaded by Chandramouli Gopalakrishnan, who is a seasoned engineering and product management leader and has held product leadership roles at Shotang, Stayzilla and Goibibo in his previous stints.

Speaking about the development, Rajnish Kumar, CTO & Co-founder, ixigo said, “Consumer-facing technology and product innovation is hard for airlines to manage since their core business focus is on running planes efficiently. In a fast growing mobile-first world, travellers expect airlines to adopt new technology and consumer experiences across pre and post-booking and to develop more agility in upgrading their ability to market, sell and personalize their inventory and inventory from their ancillary partners.”

Aloke Bajpai, CEO & Co-Founder, added - “With over a decade of experience in building India’s leading mobile travel marketplace, we will be bringing our learnings on mobile-first consumer experiences, growth marketing, personalization, AI and voice assistants to airlines across the world. Travenues will function as an independently run business under Chandramouli’s leadership with the mission of bringing consumer-facing deep tech innovations to airlines.”

Travenues is led by a team that has a combined experience of 20+ years in the global travel industry across GDS (Global Distribution Systems), OTA (Online Travel Agency), and meta-search.

Speaking on the new initiative, Chandramouli Gopalakrishnan, Chief Digital Officer, Travenues said, “Our mission is to help airlines power their own consumer selling experiences through a platform that uses the latest deep tech advancements in UX, engagement, segmentation, targeting, cross-selling, payments, customer service and more! We partner with airlines that wish to focus on running their planes and want to leave the tech to us. Unlike technology service providers who currently manage these experiences for them, we are actual practitioners who have built and scaled such platforms to millions of daily active users.”

ixigo, which is now the largest mobile travel platform in India with over 100 million downloads and 26 million monthly active users, aggregates and compares real-time travel information, prices & availability for flights, trains, buses, cabs, hotels, packages & destinations. ixigo has been at the forefront of tech innovation in travel for a decade with innovative products such as India’s first instant-bookable marketplace across OTAs, PNR prediction for trains, flight fare predictions and TARA, its voice and chat-based travel assistant that was a Phocuswright Award Winner in 2017.

This month, the company has also introduced India’s first augmented reality (AR) feature on its trains app called "AR Coach Position" feature that allows train travellers to accurately locate their coach positions for over 13,000 passenger trains at more than 7,000 railway stations across India.

In 2015, post raising funds from Micromax, ixigo had acquired Square Hoot Hikes, the company that owns the intercity cabs aggregator Rutogo, that allowed it to enter cab aggregation market.

Started in 2007, by Aloke Bajpai and Rajnish Kumar, ixigo aggregates and compares real-time travel information, prices & availability for flights, trains, buses, hotel availability.

In March 2017, ixigo closed a funding of $15 million in Series B round by Venture Capital firm Sequoia Capital India and Fosun RZ Capital[5

The company has recently expanded in India with the inauguration of a new product development center in Bengaluru

Source - Business Wire India
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