Yatra.com aims to become digital services platform

Online travel company Yatra.com on Tuesday said it is looking at becoming a digital services platform from being just a travel services firm, and is working in that direction. Outlining the company's strategy going forward, Yatra.com co-founder and CEO Dhruv Shringi said there is a big opportunity for the company to rethink the path of its business, especially the corporate business.

While recognising that the recovery from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will be slow, he added that "we are thinking how we can capitalise on the Yatra brand and the Yatra network that we have built". The company is taking certain steps especially on the corporate side of business. It currently has over 800 large corporate customers and more than 20,000 small and medium enterprise (SME) customers. In the discussions with customers, the company found that all large corporations want to digitalise their supply chains whether it is a supply chain for goods or services, Shringi said.

Technology platform that Yatra had built and which is implemented in a large number of these organisations today allows the company to scale and add more products and services into this platform, he added. "The way we thought about this is that let's look at our services... or think of Yatra as a digital services platform as opposed to just a travel services platform and keeping that in mind, we are building an integrated business services platform for corporates," he said.

On the consumer side, the over-the-air platform of Yatra.com would continue to operate as it is and the company will continue to strengthen its brand presence, Shringi said. He also said the company had an adequate amount of capital and it has taken initiatives and has put in place a long-term strategy to achieve significant cost cuts. Cost cuts are the need of the hour and rationalisation was important.

On being asked whether the company was looking at acquisitions going forward and if it had the funds for it, Shringi told PTI, "At this point in time, we have close to about USD 48 million on our balance sheet. So, we have got adequate amount of capital given our burn which is on the range of about USD 1.2 million a month." He added that from an M&A (merger and acquisitions) point of view, for sure there will be opportunities to consolidate the market and we will continue to evaluate the same on a case-by-case basis..

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