MakeMyTrip - Q3 2026

Transcript

Vipul Garg (Head of Investor Relations)

Reminder, this live event is being recorded by the company and will be made available for replay on our IR website shortly after the conclusion of today's event. At the end of these prepared remarks, we will also be hosting a Q&A session. Furthermore, certain statements made during today's event may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of Safe Harbor provision of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are not guarantees of the future performance, are subject to inherent uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. Any forward-looking information relayed during this event speaks only as of this date, and the company undertakes no obligation to update the information to reflect changed circumstances. Additional information concerning these statements is contained in the risk factors and forward-looking statements section of the company's annual report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC on June 16, 2025.

Copies of these filings are available from the SEC or from the company's Investor Relations Department. I would like to now turn over the call to Rajesh. Over to you, Rajesh.

Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)

Thank you, Vipul. Welcome, everyone, to our third quarter call for fiscal 2026. At the outset, pleased to share that Q3, which traditionally represents the high season for leisure travel in India, witnessed strong demand recovery, barring temporary disruption in December caused by new and stricter flight duty time limitation rules, FDTL, for pilots. The festive season and a series of long weekends fueled this demand momentum, reinforcing our belief in the emerging trend of Indian travelers' desire to spend more on travel. Our diversified product portfolio and market leadership continues to act as a mitigating factor in case there is any macro disruption that happens in one of the segments. For instance, while domestic air was impacted in December, we were able to capture some of this demand on other means of transport like bus and cabs.

We continue to believe the Indian travel market is poised to expand, driven by a confluence of economic, social, and technological factors. Our focus remains on delivering superior value and seamless booking experience and support to our customers, with constant product innovations leveraging AI. We see AI as a very welcome and positive tech evolution, with opening up many new opportunities in our business. Leveraging AI, we are aiming to improve all aspects of the customer journey, right from inspiration, discovery, search, booking, and post-sales. One of the most significant impacts of AI is the ability to offer highly personalized experience. We have developed AI models using LLMs and vast amounts of in-house proprietary data to power Myra to help customers interact with it, from planning to eventually booking their trips.

We believe over time, our product will be more relevant and effective because of our own proprietary data for travelers. Myra has now scaled to over 50,000 conversations daily, with over 72% of conversations being termed as good conversations. Around 15% of the conversations happen during early-stage trip planning, enabling us to influence destination and product choice much earlier in the customer lifecycle. Myra is also helping us drive penetration into smaller cities with its vernacular voice capabilities. Over 45% of Myra users are coming from tier-two cities and beyond, with voice-led interactions being 50% higher in non-metro cities. AI is also helping us improve post-sales customer experience through virtual assistant, providing instant 24/7 support to travelers. Our AI voice and chatbots are now autonomously resolving about half of the customer queries across flight and hotels, significantly improving service scalability and efficiency in the system.

We are also using AI to augment our data intelligence support to our supply partners. For example, to empower our hotel and host partners, we have introduced a GenAI-powered digital performance analytics summary in audio playbook format in Hindi and English, significantly improving partners' engagement. Besides, following our one-stop-shop strategy with a view to meet all travel and travel-related needs on our platform, we have now expanded our product offerings with the recent launch of tours and activities, giving Indian travelers access to over 200,000 bookable activities across 1,100 cities in 130 countries worldwide. Indian outbound tourists often struggle with dispersed information, foreign currency pricing, and disjointed planning tools when booking activities and experiences. Stitching all of it together, we aim to remove friction and make it convenient for travelers to book in-destination experiences also in advance before they start their travel.

Let me now turn to business segments, starting with air ticketing business. Air market supply and growth bounced back on the back of robust seasonal demand in October and November, with domestic daily departures growth of 2% and 5% year-on-year, respectively, from a degrowth of minus 4% in Q2. However, new flight duty rules caused disruption in December, leading to daily departures degrowing in December at minus 5% year-on-year, as against expected 5% growth year-on-year. Despite this disruption in the domestic market, we were able to deliver good performance, aided by robust growth in international travel and our diverse portfolio of all modes of transport as some of the seasonal demand moved to other modes of transport. International outbound travel from India presents a significant growth opportunity. We remain focused on growing this segment.

We have launched a new feature in the international flights funnel that provides users with end-to-end visa guidance for their destination. It covers visa types, processing timelines, permitted length of stay, required documents, and applicable fees. Users can also initiate their visa application directly on MakeMyTrip through this feature as well. Early results show strong engagement on the listing page, along with a positive impact on both conversions and visa attached rates. Our accommodation business, which includes hotels, homestays, and holiday packages, delivered a strong 20.3% volume growth year-on-year. Growth was driven by strong demand for leisure travel, with highest-ever check-ins recorded on 25th December, along with wedding season demand and MICE events. The reduction of GST on hotel rooms under the ₹7,500 category has also been a catalyst for the growth. We have seen a surge in booking volumes in this segment as customers responded to attractive pricing.

It is important to note that this has led to a divergence between volume growth and gross booking value growth. The gross booking growth is more moderate as it reflects the lower tax component in the final price paid by the customer. Lower GBV growth is an arithmetic consequence of the tax change and not a sign of any structural weakness in the segment. We continue to drive deeper penetration into India. We now have 97,000-plus accommodation options available on the platform, covering 2,050-plus cities in the country. We are also driving online penetration in the segment with strong demand coming from tier-two cities and beyond. During the quarter, we sold properties in over 1,950-plus cities across the country, with almost 100-plus new cities selling for the first time in the last 12 months.

On the product side, we have made GenAI-led interventions across top 25 international cities, including prominent international beach destinations, to power beachfront discovery for beach holiday-seeking travelers. We are also using this knowledge graph information to determine and introduce clear beach proximity tags like on-the-beach, beachfront, short walk-to-beach on listing pages, thus improving discovery and conversion. In addition, for women travelers, we now feature women-specific ratings, AI-generated review summaries, and safety scores derived from female travelers to support deep information-seeking behavior. By adding specific safety indicators and top-rated by women filters, we are building a confidence-driven ecosystem for a segment that travels 25% more in groups. These features are already live across 100+ cities and 33,000+ properties. This comprehensive approach ensures that the growing number of women travelers can explore with predictability and trust. Our holiday packages business witnessed strong seasonal performance as well.

During the quarter, we successfully operated MakeMyTrip chartered flight packages to Phu Quoc in Vietnam, thereby unlocking the potential in an unexplored destination for our outbound travelers. This reinforces our belief that direct connection, along with a simplified visa process, helps open new destinations very well. Philippines, for instance, is another such recent example. Our homestay business continues to scale well. During the quarter, we sold 27,600-plus unique properties, covering over 1,050-plus cities. This business now contributes early double-digits to the overall hotels volume. Our bus ticketing business witnessed strong growth in Q3, aided by festive and holiday travel, with all regions growing in double digits. Inventory addition remained buoyant throughout Q3 fiscal year 2026, with private inventory crossing 45,000 daily schedules by the end of quarter, compared to 40,000 daily schedules during the same quarter last year.

During the quarter, we strengthened cross-sales strategy by introducing unified inventory on the rail search page, enabling rail users to discover available buses on their search routes. In our Southeast Asia redBus platform, we partnered with Grab to integrate intercity bus and ferry bookings into its platform, giving more options and making travel more convenient for users. Our corporate travel business, via both our platforms, MyBiz and Quest2Travel, is witnessing strong growth on the back of new customer acquisition. Our active corporate customer count on MyBiz is now over 77,500-plus, compared to 64,000 customers during the same quarter last year, and for Quest2Travel, the active customer count has reached 539 large corporates, compared to 493 customers in the same quarter last year. You would recall that we had acquired travel expense management platform Happay at the start of the year.

I'm happy to report that our integration with Happay is now complete, with flights and hotels resulting in Happay becoming a complete travel and expense management solution now. With this, let me now hand over the call to Mohit for financial highlights of the quarter.

Mohit Kabra (Group CFO)

Thanks Rajesh. Hello, everyone. The highlight of the quarter was our strong performance in October-November, wherein we capitalized on the improved travel sentiment by launching our first-of-a-kind festival travel sale called Travel Ka Mahurat Sale. It saw the widest-ever participation from our suppliers across travel services, as well as our non-trade partners. It helped us engage with over 75 million users during this sale period of about 33 days. It also helped us build significant advanced purchase behavior, particularly for the upcoming peak holiday travel in December. It also helped us mitigate the impact from the low light of the quarter, which was the disruption of flight operations, particularly during the first fortnight of the December month, which significantly impacted travel plans and bookings during that period. While the situation has now stabilized, complete supply recovery is likely to get pushed out into the next fiscal year.

We are pleased to report that despite the disruption in the month of peak seasonality, we are able to drive strong performance overall for the quarter. Moving on to our segment results, our air ticketing adjusted margin stood at $107.9 million, registering a year-on-year growth of 20.4% in constant currency. This robust performance was driven by strong growth in international air ticketing business, which now accounts for about 43% of the adjusted margin within the air ticketing segment. In the domestic air market, while the industry grew by just 0.9% year-on-year, we were able to deliver 2.2% year-on-year growth. On a flown basis, we saw slight market share gains, with our share now increasing to just over 31% during the quarter. For the hotels and packages segment, we recorded strong volume growth of 20.3% year-on-year, with standalone hotels growing even faster at 20.6%.

This was largely on the back of strong demand, aided by the recent rationalization of GST rates for hotels priced under INR 7,500, where the GST rate has been reduced from 12% to 5%. This has resulted in strong room night growth of over 23% in the non-premium price segment. As a result of this big shift, as explained by Rajesh, we saw a slightly muted gross booking growth year-on-year at about 15.9%. The adjusted margin in the standalone hotels business was in line with the GBV growth. It is encouraging that this tax rationalization initiative of the Government of India has had a positive impact on driving up volumes in the hotel segment. The mix of international hotels and packages revenue has also increased to about 24.2% during the quarter, compared to about 23% during the same quarter last year.

In our bus ticketing business, adjusted margin stood at $42.4 million, registering a strong year-on-year growth of over 26.1% in constant currency. Our ancillaries business, which is part of the other segment, is scaling up well. This is helping us get a larger share of the wallet of our customers by building the attach of a variety of ancillary services. As a result, adjusted margin from the other segment came in at $27.5 million, witnessing a strong growth of 45.5% year-on-year in constant currency. Moving on to the expenses side, most expenses have come in line. Marketing and sales promotion expense for the quarter was at 5.6% of gross bookings, again in line with high seasonality and improving mix coming in on the back of strong growth in higher margin businesses like hotels and packages, bus ticketing, and ancillaries.

This improvement in the mix is also translating into marginally better profitability for us. Our adjusted operating margin has improved from 1.76% of gross bookings during the same quarter last year to 1.82% of gross bookings during the current reported quarter. We are glad to report our first $50 million-plus adjusted operating profit during the quarter, with the actual number standing at $50.7 million. The non-cash interest cost on our zero-coupon convertible bonds for the quarter was recorded at $28.3 million, and the translation-related foreign currency losses in view of the rupee depreciation stood at about $5.3 million. As a result, our reported PAT for the quarter was $7.3 million. The adjusted net profit came in at about $51.4 million, with adjusted diluted EPS growing by about 33% year-on-year.

You would recall that as part of our capital allocation strategy last quarter, we had increased the size of our buyback plan to $200 million and also included the recently issued 2030 convertible notes in the repurchase plan. We have repurchased 0.55 million shares for an aggregate amount of approximately $41.5 million during the quarter. We also repurchased 2030 notes with a principal amount of $5 million for an aggregate amount of approximately $4.6 million. Accordingly, the total utilization for the buyback program was about $46.1 million, which has been our highest in-market buyback till date. We ended the quarter with cash equivalents of over $800 million. We continue to dial up investments in core growth capabilities like AI and other organic initiatives while scouting for potential strategic investment opportunities. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Vipul for Q&A.

Vipul Garg (Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Mohit. All the participants will now have the opportunity to ask a question from the management. Anyone who's willing to, who's looking to ask a question can click on the raise hand button on their screen, and we will take the questions one by one. The first question is from the line of Aditya Suresh of Macquarie. Aditya, you may please ask your question now.

Aditya Suresh (Head of India Equity Research)

Thank you for the opportunity. So, two questions. The first is on the standalone hotels segment. There's clearly been a fairly strong acceleration in kind of your number of hotel room nights booked. Could you further break down that by maybe the premium segment, the budget segment, and also international in terms of the growth you're seeing there? And then in relation to that, are there any changes to the underlying take rate you're seeing as this mix is changing? Thank you.

Mohit Kabra (Group CFO)

Hi, Aditya, maybe I can take that. Like I just called out, you know, the whole GST rationalization, which had kind of come in, you know, end of September, was expected to kind of be a failure for growth in the hotel segment. And we have actually seen this coming through. So, while our overall standalone hotel room nights have grown at about 20.6%, the room night growth in the non-premium segment, which is, you know, the budget to kind of mid-pricing, that has been much stronger at about 23% year-on-year. So, we clearly saw that benefit coming through. In terms of overall margins, I think our margins have largely stayed in line, you know, at about 17.7%. So, there's no real kind of, you know, significant change in the margin structure per se.

And like we've been calling out, we want to kind of, you know, keep the margins in the kind of, you know, teens category, the high teens category. And we are kind of pretty comfortable in having a stable regime on the margin side.

Aditya Suresh (Head of India Equity Research)

Thanks, Mohit. And then the second piece is on ancillary services. Now, here you're seeing really strong revenue growth. Is it at all possible for you to quantify the underlying margin you're seeing here? Because I assume that a lot of this is just locked down to EBITDA or EBIT. Can you just like talk through and give us any color on kind of the underlying margin for the growth you're seeing in ancillary services? Thanks.

Mohit Kabra (Group CFO)

Sure. I mean, it's really the growth in the other segment or ancillaries. It has been a continuing trend if you look at it over the last few years. And this is also coming in from the fact that we have been adding a lot of, you know, new services on the platform, like over the last few years. And over a period of time, each one of them is scaling up well. So, just to give you an example, a couple of years back, two years back, we added, you know, the intercity cab segment. We dialed up the airport transfers. We have started dialing up, you know, rail ticketing, particularly for the high-speed air-conditioned trains. There also, our market share has kind of, you know, now gone up closer to about 4%, 5%.

And apart from this, we've also been adding a lot of non-travel, I mean, non-transport kind of ancillaries, whether it is bite-sized insurance, whether it is Forex, whether it is kind of, you know, sponsorships and ad tech on the platform. Visa services is something that Rajesh had called out. All of these put together, we believe, and this year we had also kind of, you know, added a new segment, you know, of tours and activities. Now, again, this is something which is very interesting because guess what? A lot of these customers, travel customers, book their core travel bookings with us, but there is a requirement of, you know, in-destination services as well, you know, largely on tours and activities. And building that on the platform helps us kind of, you know, retain them even for these services, you know, with us.

So, with this increasing kind of, you know, spread of, you know, other travel or travel-related services, which we are going on adding, we do believe that, you know, the other segment will keep kind of, you know, delivering good growth for us. And at some point in time, maybe, you know, five, seven years down the line, some of these segments could kind of become meaningful to be reported on their own basis. But yeah, there are some segments which are more transport-related, and there the margins are largely in line with the industry. And for some of the others, there is a significant fall down to the profitability. So, like I said, you know, when we look at profitability, we largely look at it, you know, at a platform level.

And therefore, we largely report kind of, you know, margins at a segment level, but report expenses and profitability at a platform level.

Aditya Suresh (Head of India Equity Research)

Thank you, Mohit.

Vipul Garg (Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Aditya. The next question is from the line of Sachin Salgaonkar of Bank of America. Sachin, you may please ask your question now.

Sachin Shrikant Salgaonkar (Managing Director)

Thanks, Vipul. Hi, management. I have three questions. First question, a follow-up to Aditya's question. Mohit, when we look at a year-over-year growth in hotel business, it was 17% last quarter. It's now 9%, which has gone below 10% this quarter. Understand the impact of GST, also understand the impact of rupee depreciation. But, you know, how to think about it? Is there some kind of a one-off out here? How should one think about a normalized growth from this business? This business was growing at 20-odd% plus in previous quarters. So, you know, should we see the growth resuming back to that number? Should I say all three questions, or, you know, should I take one?

Mohit Kabra (Group CFO)

You're on mute.

Sachin Shrikant Salgaonkar (Managing Director)

Yeah, thanks, Vipul.

Mohit Kabra (Group CFO)

Yeah, sorry. You know, let me just kind of, you know, explain this a little better because there's something which kind of is more like a, you know, one-off starting in this particular quarter onwards, right? Because the GST rationalization almost happened at the end of the previous quarter, and important to kind of, you know, explain this at a very high level, if you really look at it, we have reported, you know, more than 20% growth on the volume side. Now, if you look at the price segment, you know, which is below INR 7,500, there's been a GST reduction of almost 7%. And almost two-thirds or 70% plus of our volumes come in from this particular price segment, so roughly about, you know, a blended impact of about 5% plus goes through purely on account of the GST-related impact on the gross booking value.

Therefore, like I said, you know, our gross booking growth year-on-year in constant currency has actually come in at about 15.8%. Therefore, if you kind of factor in this additional 5% impact, which came in on the GST side, then our growth actually kind of, you know, pretty much remains in line with the volume growth. I thought I'll just kind of try and, you know, share the overall impact coming in with the GST rationalization. Otherwise, there's no real one-off impact. It's just going to be a, because we didn't, we had a different GST rate in the previous year, on a year-on-year basis, this looks slightly different.

Vipul Garg (Head of Investor Relations)

Mohit, do you want to think about it?

Mohit Kabra (Group CFO)

Sorry, Sachin, if I may just ask you to clarify, I heard you saying 9% number somewhere. Which number are you referring to?

Sachin Shrikant Salgaonkar (Managing Director)

So, Rajesh, I was reporting to the reported hotels and packages revenue, which is $133.2 million. 3Q24, it was $121.9 million. So, it sort of, you know, implies a 9% year-over-year growth.

Mohit Kabra (Group CFO)

No, that's true, and, you know, therefore, I was just trying to bake in the currency kind of, you know, impact as well in calling out the constant currency growth.

Sachin Shrikant Salgaonkar (Managing Director)

So, no, I get it, you know, Mohit, now that, you know, we end up seeing numbers on a reported currency basis. Going ahead, we should sort of look at a similar kind of a growth, a slight increase from these levels, right? You know.

Mohit Kabra (Group CFO)

Absolutely. Absolutely. At least for, you know, the four quarters now, you know, beginning this quarter that we have reported, this GST impact would be there. Constant currency impact would largely be, you know, dependent on how the kind of, you know, currency, you know, kind of, you know, plays out in the coming quarters. But the GST impact would largely remain on these lines.

Sachin Shrikant Salgaonkar (Managing Director)

Got it. Second question on IndiGo. We all know they've been asked to cut 10% of capacity. Our general checks in the market indicate that, you know, till date, other airlines are not able to sort of, you know, fully offset that capacity impact. So, as we head into calendar 2026, how should we look at the domestic air traffic growth for industry? Do we see that normalizing, or do we still have a bit of an impact out there for full year 2026?

Mohit Kabra (Group CFO)

So, maybe I can take that, Sachin. You know, this particular disruption was not even factored in. It came from nowhere, you know, to be honest, because these rules were always there. But, you know, I don't think anyone anticipated that this would cause this kind of a disruption and therefore the reduction of supply will happen. And largely happened with, you know, IndiGo because that's the largest airline in the market. Now, our sense is that at least the estimates that we see based on our conversations that while things might have just from a disruption standpoint stabilized, but in this running quarter, JFM quarter, it should come back to again, you know, the positive territory. And I'm talking about daily departures getting back to, you know, because December it was negative growth of -5% on daily departures on an overall basis.

The estimates are now suggesting that it should be back to the positive zone, but albeit at a, you know, either a flat or a 1% or 2% year-on-year positive growth, and as things progress and more we get out of, you know, this particular issue where the rosters settle down, the pilots come on board, et cetera, slowly and gradually, this will continue to keep improving. Outside of this, nothing else changes because the new plane schedules, whichever were coming, the supply coming, that will continue to keep coming. We also learned that, you know, even with Air India, the refurbishment of the planes is also happening at an accelerated pace, along with the fact that they're also getting sort of new planes on a regular basis as well, so, that is likely to continue.

I think the overall picture in all fairness will be more clearer. I would say maybe the next seasonal quarter, which is April, May, June quarter, when the summer schedules are filed. I think we will be in better position to see overall, you know, what kind of supply schedules are being filed, factoring in this temporary issue that happened because of the new rules on flight duty time for pilots and the new induction of, you know, the refurbished planes that are coming in. I think we'll have to wait net net one more quarter. I've already given you this quarter sort of estimates that the industry is talking about.

Sachin Shrikant Salgaonkar (Managing Director)

Thanks, Rajesh. And my third question is on agentic AI and maybe two parts to the question. One would love to understand the feedback on Myra since you guys launched. And second, in a market like U.S., we are actually seeing Google and ChatGPT launch their agentic AI on travel. Now, hopefully, and subsequently, perhaps at some point, it might come into India. So, as and when that comes, how should we think from a MakeMyTrip perspective? Is it a new competition for MakeMyTrip where consumers now have an option to go towards these LLMs and book their ticket despite the fact that at the backend fulfillment perhaps could be done by, let's say, MakeMyTrip only?

Mohit Kabra (Group CFO)

Yeah. So, let's talk about that. So, firstly, progress on Myra, very encouraging, I must say. In fact, some of that I was sort of mentioning that in the script as well, but I'll give you more color. So, there are a few metrics that we've been tracking. The first one is how's the interactions, the number of interactions are growing. So, from, let's say, a couple of months ago, about 20,000, 25,000 interactions a day, we have now touched about 50,000 transactions, interactions a day, not transactions a day, but interactions a day on Myra, which is, you know, 2X growth in two months. And, you know, we are sort of seeing pretty much day-on-day, week-on-week growth on that. So, clearly good traction coming up. And then on the quality metric side, we also measure what we call as good conversation and also the quality score of the interaction.

That is also progressively improving. We now have a quality score of about 3.9 on a scale of one to five. About 72% of the conversations are good quality conversations. It's not like just to give you a sense of what the good quality conversation is, that the interaction is, you know, sort of happening with more and more back-and-forth sort of question answers rather than just asking a, you know, sort of 30,000 feet level query and then just going off the interface. That number is about 72%. The other two very important and encouraging metrics that we are tracking, one is, and that was one of our hypotheses as well, one is about the new users. We are seeing out of these 50,000 interactions, about 20% interactions are happening from the new users, never transacted before.

And that is largely coming from tier three, tier four cities, which is exactly what we were sort of aiming to get, you know, where the voice bot is being largely used in vernacular language or the spoken language that consumers prefer, coming in from whichever city, whichever state that they are coming from. So, and then last but not the least, I would say, which is sort of will be a perfect segue to your second part of the question, that the trip planning part, because that was another thing that, you know, the OTAs had not really been globally focusing on the top end of the funnel, which is the trip planning piece. On Myra, we have seen at least about 23% or 24% of the interactions are related to more trip planning and not necessarily immediate travel.

So, all these metrics are pointing towards quite promising, encouraging sort of trends. And we will continue to keep monitoring. And in parallel, obviously, we are working, you know, very hard to further improve the product as well. So, that journey is also in progress. Now, coming to your point on, you know, what Google might have launched in North America and, you know, when it comes to India, et cetera, you know, our take is as follows. You know, what is happening is, like I just mentioned earlier, that as far as transactions and fulfillment and, you know, the kind of traveler who's willing to, who's made up his mind or her mind and coming to, you know, just book the transaction and get done with it, I don't think that is going to get any way sort of potentially disrupted.

Trip planning was the piece which was not being done by OTAs in any case, right? So, then it remains to be seen that if they launch, let's say, their own GenAI tool for trip planning, you know, whether they will attract more traction. And I think in all probability, there is a possibility that they will attract traction and that the customers from conventional search will move to using AI tools for doing trip planning. And to my mind, a large part of that is going to be share shift happening from a conventional search to AI tools. But our counter to that, to an extent, will also be our own GenAI tool for trip planning as well.

But the thing to watch out for will be, you know, how do we sort of continue to keep protecting our direct traffic, which is, you know, majority of that is on our app, as you know, that they continue to keep coming to us directly or we end up sort of, you know, keep growing that direct traffic as a percentage of the overall traffic. And the share of the paid traffic from any of these, you know, sort of new avatars of the search engines, we don't end up sort of increasing the share of the paid traffic from there.

I don't really see, at least at this point in time, basis our conversation and basis, you know, the kind of development that has happened, including the development that is in progress, that there is anyone who's trying to talk about, you know, getting to really deep in the funnel and also looking at even the fulfillment, post-sales activities, et cetera, because those are the modes that will continue to stay with the OTAs. I think trip planning is the only piece where, you know, there is definitely potential possibility given the richness of the data that they will have based on the LLMs that they might get more traction. But the counter to that for that will be our, you know, sort of live-to-date customer base and the direct traffic contribution that we already have.

You know, how powerful and popular is the brand that, you know, MakeMyTrip, Goibibo, and redBus are? And are we able to sort of protect that progressively or not? Our sort of energies, investments, resources, et cetera, would be channeled towards that as we continue to watch this space and then accordingly sort of, you know, if we need to tweak our strategies as we go along. We are seeing this as more, you know, sort of the overall GenAI, and I call that out as well, specifically as more opportunity than threat. I don't think, and, you know, even historically, even in the conventional search, you know, sort of space, this debate was always that, you know, whether Google is our competition or Google is the competition for OTAs and not OTAs or not. I don't think that debate might still come back.

But the reality is that, you know, like in the past, I think there are clear distinct modes and the advantages that the OTAs bring to the table. And I think they are a very clear and distinct sort of objective and the business model that the horizontals or the generic search engines have. I'm not sure that even with this evolution of this new technology, there's going to be a significant overlap going forward either.

Sachin Shrikant Salgaonkar (Managing Director)

Got it, Rajesh. Thanks for the detailed answer. Very small clarification, Mohit. We saw the NCLT approval for MakeMyTrip and the redBus merger, which in a way sort of removes any legal or regulatory overhang from a potential India IPO point of view. So, any revised timelines we should look from an IPO point of view? That's it from me. Thanks.

Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)

Not really. I think, you know, should we kind of, you know, think of that? We'll kind of, you know, come back separately. This, as you know, we have been kind of, you know, in this restructuring process, you know, a couple of years back, we had done a legal entity restructuring wherein we got the OTA businesses to kind of, you know, come together, and now all the key operating businesses have been brought under a single legal entity, but yeah, it does facilitate an eventual IPO at some point in time to that extent, but no real kind of, you know, change in thought process over there.

Sachin Shrikant Salgaonkar (Managing Director)

Thank you.

Vipul Garg (Head of Investor Relations)

Sachin, the next question is from the line of Manish Adukia of Goldman. Manish, you may please ask your question now.

Manish Adukia (Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you, Vipul. Hi, good evening, team. So, wanted to just go back to the growth discussion we were having in the earlier part of the call. So, I understand, Mohit, what you explained in the volume being extremely strong, 20% plus, and GBV 15% because of GST. But why should revenue growth get impacted? Do you get paid from the hotels' basis, the GBV, or the actual revenue that they recognize? And I would have imagined that if growth is faster in mid to premium, sorry, mid to budget hotels, technically your take rate should expand because you typically would have higher take rates in mid to budget compared to, you know, premium hotels. So, I'm unable to reconcile the revenue slowdown. I understand GBV slowdown there, but I'm unable to understand the revenue rate. So, if you can just explain that, that'll be great. Thank you.

That's my first question.

Mohit Kabra (Group CFO)

Yeah. No, just to kind of, you know, repeat it, Manish. Yeah, the, you know, if you really look at it, margins largely come in on the booking value, right? And therefore, the impact in a manner of sort kind of flows both into the booking value as well as into the overall margin, absolute margin that we get. So, the percentage doesn't change, but the absolute margin that we get kind of, you know, gets impacted as well. But I think, like we had been calling this out even last quarter, when this change had come in, you know, we were calling it out as a significant positive because, see, this just helps unlock kind of, you know, volumes or demand, particularly at the price point, which is very sensitive, right?

Customers are kind of, you know, pretty price sensitive in the mid to kind of, you know, budget segment. And therefore, this is an important unlock. And therefore, if you really look at it, the growth has actually kind of accelerated very nicely through this quarter. In fact, not just only, you know, in hotels, but across segments. Despite, you know, domestic air being, you know, at a very marginal kind of a growth, you know, for us and for the industry, our overall segment growth, you know, across all segments that we report also stood at about 22%. So, I think I'm kind of more taking encouragement from the fact that, you know, the segment growth or the volume-led growth continues to be strong. The rest is largely kind of, you know, a play out of the changes in the landscape.

They will get kind of, you know, normalized over a four-quarter period.

Manish Adukia (Equity Research Analyst)

Very helpful. And your air growth, of course, in the quarter was impacted by what happened with IndiGo. And hotels were extremely strong, partly driven by the GST cut on volume. But would the hotel volume growth, in your opinion, have been even faster without the IndiGo disruption? Like, I mean, I'm just trying to think that from here on, even on volume, is there room to accelerate in the foreseeable future?

Mohit Kabra (Group CFO)

No, needless to mention, you know, Manish, actually, you know, flights is a lead indicator, right? It kind of, if you look at the entire travel plans, for most Indians, they start with a flight booking. And then everything else follows, right? So, I think what we are trying to do, you know, is that whatever is the significant, you know, kind of adverse impact coming in from the disruption on the flight side, to a large extent, we are trying to mitigate it through other modes of transport. And therefore, if you see, we have been dialing up or kind of, you know, seeing good growth on the bus ticketing side, also on, you know, intercity cabs, et cetera. So, I think we clearly could have benefited without a disruption, you know, on the flight side.

If I really look at it very briefly, you know, in terms of how the growth has panned out, you know, between the months during the quarter, clearly December was a, you know, a month of, you know, much slower growth for us. Therefore, you know, kind of, again, indicators are the same. Would have helped. I think given the circumstances, the hotel growth was very, very encouraging.

Manish Adukia (Equity Research Analyst)

No, absolutely, and just a couple of other follow-up questions from earlier. On the overall spend on marketing and promotion at 5.6%, one of the highest we've seen in recent periods. Again, is there like some bit of like one-off there? I mean, should it go back to the sub-5% number you in the past indicated, and again, is part of that a function of the fact that again, when budget or mid hotels grow faster and they probably have a higher component of marketing promotion that impacted it, so just want to understand the outlook also on that number, and then just have one last follow-up question after that.

Mohit Kabra (Group CFO)

Yeah, absolutely. No one-offs. In fact, two parts to it. You know, one, I would say, is the very fact that low-margin businesses like air ticketing, you know, have seen an adverse impact on growth, right? And therefore, the growth has come in predominantly from higher-margin businesses. Now, what that means is clearly you're kind of getting a much better improvement in the blended margin, you know, for the business as a whole. So, if you were to look at adjusted margins across segments and then look at it, you know, probably as a percentage of gross bookings, then it would look much more healthier. The customer acquisition cost also. So, you know, it's completely linked to the mix shift.

And then within that mix shift, there is also the fact that there is, you know, slightly more accentuation towards the budget to kind of, you know, mid segment of hotels, where again, the customer acquisition cost tends to be slightly higher. So, I think purely reflective of the mix. And therefore, you know, if you really see, despite the 5.6%, it has had no impact in terms of, you know, the adjusted operating number that continues to be 1.8%+ as a percentage of gross booking. So, just wanted to call that out. And it's very difficult, like I said, you know, the mix and the blended margins were very different, say, until about a year back. And are much very different, you know, in this one-year period due to these, you know, one-offs that have got played out.

Manish Adukia (Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you, Mohit, and maybe just my last question, taking a step back and, you know, looking at the overall business, 20% consecutive revenue growth in the quarter, which was a fairly noisy quarter, which in my opinion is a very good outcome, but when we think about, let's say, over a one- to three-year outlook, is it fair to say that to deliver 20% growth, you have to continue to reinvest in business and margins don't expand, which means over a period of time, your EBITDA growth broadly tracks revenue growth? Because I would have thought that in a country like India, if revenues are growing at 20%, operating costs probably grow at a lower pace. Is that something that may not play out? I mean, is it not an operating leverage story anymore and margins will largely be in line to where they are?

Or how should we think about the growth outlook versus, you know, the EBITDA growth outlook, revenue growth versus EBITDA growth? That's my last question. Thank you.

Mohit Kabra (Group CFO)

Sure. If you look at it over the last five, 10 years, we've clearly called out that a substantial portion of, you know, the margin improvement that was supposed to come in, leveraging volumes and leveraging, you know, penetration and building kind of market leadership in each of the segments of the business, that's largely played out between, I would say, you know, by 2024, right? So, and thereafter, we have been calling out that, you know, our customer acquisition costs are actually pretty efficient right now. And we don't really look at, you know, kind of dialing them down. We'd rather kind of keep focusing on dialing up growth and looking at growing in the 20s. And that opportunity is getting delivered despite the market growth coming down very significantly, at least in this year, right, across quarters.

So, I think, I would say, large part of our objectives, considering the mix where we are. So, say, for instance, where the accommodation mix is still in the 40s, right? So, till the time we remain in the 40s and, say, you know, closer or the sub 50% mark, we do believe our, you know, adjusted operating margins are kind of pretty healthy. I've always given the example of the global players and how their kind of, you know, the best-in-class margins play out. And if we just kind of superimpose our mix over there, this margin percentage looks very healthy. So, I think we will really need now the mix going beyond the 50% mark for any significant kind of improvement on the adjusted operating margins to play out.

Until then, I think the operating leverage will likely come in more from the more fixed than variable costs, which again is very small. So, in our case, the fixed costs are just about, you know, probably like about 20%, 25% of the overall expenses, and therefore, the improvements are going to be much smaller in nature, in line with what we have seen in the last two years or so compared to what we have seen in the five years before that.

Manish Adukia (Equity Research Analyst)

Very helpful. Thank you, Mohit, for answering my questions. All the best.

Mohit Kabra (Group CFO)

Thank you.

Vipul Garg (Head of Investor Relations)

Manish, the next question is from the line of Vijit Jain of Citigroup. Please ask your question now.

Vijit Jain (Director)

Yeah, hi. Thank you. So, my question, you know, in the hotel segment, you know, with the GST cut, did demand somewhat shift also from higher ticket size to sub INR 7,500 category? And within that, given that, you know, you even called out that growth did accelerate here. So, is that because, you know, in general, you have better selection in that category and therefore some market shift, market share shift might have happened from others or from offline or other channels to you? Is that something that happened here?

Mohit Kabra (Group CFO)

Vijit, as you know, you know, on the premium side, you know, we pretty much have, you know, all the kind of, you know, hotels that are available in the country, you know, on the platform. So, most of our expansion actually keeps happening more in the mid to premium kind of, you know, or more in the mid to budget or more in the budget segment, right? From a price point of view, where we keep adding more and more kind of, you know, hotels on the platform. Because there's a much larger kind of, you know, number of hotels in that particular price point, which still need to be, you know, kind of, you know, contracted and put on the platform, except for maybe new hotels, which come across, you know, all price points.

So, that, you know, improvement in the booking of offerings in the budget segment will keep increasing. No doubt about that. But this is more, I think, you know, what we saw during the quarter was more on account of, you know, the significant price differential, which has now emerged in the sub INR 7,500 versus, say, for instance, the INR 7,500-INR 9,000 or INR 10,000 price range, because there, you know, suddenly got a significant kind of, you know, impact coming in from the steep change in the GST rates. So, that's seeing a lot more of the volume kind of, you know, coming through in the sub INR 7,500 price range.

In fact, a lot of the hotels who were on the marginal side, just about the INR 7,500 price, would have also wanted to kind of, you know, bring their prices in line, you know, for the overall, you know, customer benefit to play out, so that's what's kind of playing out, and that's what we have seen largely on expected lines, and like I said, there has been a little bit of a share shift from a volume point of view. We have seen roughly about, you know, close to about 3% shift happening from, you know, premium, super premium to maybe more like, you know, the mid to kind of, you know, budget segment, and again, you know, on the overall mix also roughly about 4%-5%, whether in terms of gross booking value or in terms of, you know, adjusted margins, so yes.

This is very, very much on expected lines. Like I was saying, the real underneath benefit of it is it's really helped unlock demand in the overall hotels category.

Vijit Jain (Director)

Got it. Thanks, Mohit. My second question, you know, just riffing on, you know, your comments earlier, Rajesh, on agentic AI and LLMs and those things. I'm just wondering if, you know, trip planning is what moves to LLM and trip planning is, you know, arguably on search versus LLM, LLM offers much better experience. Does that mean that it could accelerate further your online shift in, you know, categories like international or other, you know, packages and stuff where traditionally people have used agents because it's complex and, you know, LLMs make it easier? Could that conversely actually help online shift in India?

Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)

No, I think it's an interesting take, Vijit, I must say. Yeah, quite possible. See, listen, in any case, overall across the categories, not necessarily on travel and within travel also, all segments directionally going in that direction only, you know, from offline to online, and you know, can we say that the digital agents tomorrow or even on the trip planning when it is becoming more popular? I don't know whether the trip planning per se, because, you know, I could also argue that even, you know, historically, you know, the people were going to Google and searching and doing some bit of trip planning there, right? Or going to TripAdvisor to do some trip planning specifically or coming to OTAs to do some part of trip planning, et cetera. So, I don't know whether that per se will, you know, sort of trigger this shift.

But I think what is potentially, what can potentially trigger is actually what we have built, which is, you know, Myra as a digital agent because it is interactive, because you can ask the question in your language that you are comfortable. And you can look for complex itineraries, ask as many questions as you want, and you will get accurate answers. And then along with that, the booking will also be stitched in a very smooth manner. That might actually help because the hypothesis is that, you know, you're going to, you know, a travel agent, all human travel agent, to ask for help, ask to ask for help specifically for customization, right? And now you can achieve that customization on, you know, on the digital agent as well, almost as effectively, if not better, as you would do it with the other alternative, right?

So that you were doing it or you were using it earlier. I think that might actually help, you know, do the shift or accelerate the shift better. I'm not sure only trip planning. The only trip planning, where trip planning could help is that where overall sort of inspiration for travel goes, because that in any case is happening. The consumer behavior is changing and spending more and more on travel in any case. So, you go on your preferred, either the social media channel for inspiration and then come to, let's say, horizontal search or an OTA like MakeMyTrip to do trip planning and you find it easier and smoother. And you travel more and more, whether it is domestic or, you know, an easy, you know, sort of travel use case or a complex travel use case. That potentially can definitely help.

But specific to international travel, I think Myra might be the digital agent more, which is answering all the questions and also stitching the, you know, booking experience together and also post-sales and in-trip, you know, in a single interface. That might actually help, you know, sort of trigger that shift.

Vijit Jain (Director)

All right. Thanks, Raj. And my last question on the, you know, total marketing spend, which I think to Manish's question earlier, you mentioned how mix shift has contributed to it rising to 5.6%. So, as, you know, air recovers maybe from the summer season onwards or maybe even marginal recovery quarter-over-quarter in the March quarter, does it trend, does your total spend trend back towards what you've, you know, previously said, 5%-5.5%?

Mohit Kabra (Group CFO)

Most likely, Vijit. It should start kind of, you know, reflecting the mix because, like I said, there's nothing in terms of a one-off over here, and therefore, it should start reflecting the mix depending upon what kind of changes we see over there.

Vijit Jain (Director)

Got it. Thanks, Mohit. Those were my questions.

Vipul Garg (Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Vijit. The last question we will take from the line of Gautam Chhugani of Bernstein. Gautam, you may please ask your question now.

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. So, just a couple of questions. One is the net take rate on air is about 7% this quarter, 7.2% last quarter. Is that a normal number or is it running higher than a normal range of like 6.5% or so?

Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)

I think, you know, it generally kind of tends to range, you know, around this mark. You know, it can be about half a percentage point lower or higher depending upon what kind of fares are, you know, prevailing, depending upon the kind of, you know, lag between booking versus flown, et cetera. So, nothing exceptional out over here, got off.

Okay. Got it. And then the second question is going back to the hotels and packages business. So, when we think of the constant currency bookings growth of 15%, I think you explained it as volume growth of 20% and then 5 points of impact from GST. But then apart from volume and GST impact, there's also pricing. Because all these hotel companies report like pretty decent, pretty decent ADR growth. So, for you, the price net pricing growth is like zero almost, right? So, I guess there is some price growth and then negative mix impact, which is canceling each other. But if I just think about going forward, let's say next one year where you mentioned for the next four quarters, this GST impact will hit you.

Are we thinking of broadly an algorithm where your constant currency GBV growth will be like five percentage points below your volume growth like it was this quarter, or does that gap sequentially keep reducing? Maybe if you can share a one-year view as well as a two, three-year view, that'll be helpful.

Directionally. See, directionally, and it is only just a one-year impact because, you know, the comparable number for the previous year is at a different kind of, you know, GST rate. So, therefore, it's just more an optical thing than anything which is kind of, you know, actually impacting the business. So, this is more optical and don't see any real impact as such over here. Sorry, I missed the first part of the second question. What was that? I got that, Mohit. Maybe I'll just quickly address that, and just to your point on hotel companies reporting higher price rise and all, you should just be mindful on one thing. See, what you're looking at is only a few data points.

Like, you know, let's say listed companies reporting some, and again, their rates have also not significantly gone high on our platform across the segments we are selling hotels, right? And, you know, on a blended basis where there is a possibility in one particular segment in certain cities, you know, some because of the demand supply gap, et cetera, some price movement would have happened. But as a general trend on a blended basis across the segments, if we look, and even if we sort of look at different segment hotels, whether it's a budget hotel segment or a mid segment or a, you know, premium and then super premium kind of segment, we haven't really seen any price increase, which is extraordinary or out of the ordinary now happening. So, it's actually that era is over. It is actually pretty stable now.

You would only see either because of seasonality, there will be some movement, or there will be an inflationary increase year on year, right? So, I don't think we should jump to conclusion that, you know, the average selling price for a particular room night across the board, the rates have only gone up, you know, in pretty much every segment. I thought I'll just clarify that because, you know, on our platform, we also have, you know, out of our hotel and packages business, about 10% homestays. Now, homestays pricing and year on year and across segments. And therefore, on a blended basis across the board and Pan India basis, if you would see, there is no significant price increase except for the seasonality impact that we've seen.

Maybe just one last follow-up on domestic hotels business. So, at least among the listed OTA players, we don't see anyone else having any meaningful hotel business right now. So, at least in the domestic segment, is that a fair conclusion that there is not really much competition? And when we look at like the broader industry data, hotel domestic plus international, there we see, I guess you have competition from these global players. But let's say at least on the domestic segment, would it be fair to conclude that you would be the one dominating and not much competition?

Reasonably fair to say, but you know, just keep in mind that in the overall online penetration in the segment is still in the early stages. So, there's a long headroom over there, but fairly in the right direction. Thank you.

Thank you.

Vipul Garg (Head of Investor Relations)

In the interest of time, this was our last question. We'll now hand over to Rajesh for his closing comments.

Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)

Thank you, Vipul, and thank you everyone for your patience. And we look forward to see you next quarter.

Vipul Garg (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you. Thank you, everyone. You may now disconnect the call.