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Travel - Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Indian Travel Site MakeMyTrip Files $100M IPO

Indian online travel portal MakeMyTrip has filed for a $100M IPO and plans to trade on the Nasdaq. The company reports a $6.2M loss for the fiscal year ending March 31, on $83.56M in revenue.

MakeMyTrip shareholders include Softbank Asia Infrastructure Fund (which owns over half of the pre-IPO stake), Tiger Global Private Investment Partners, Helion Ventures and Sierra Ventures.

The business started in 2000 in the US, selling flights to India to non-resident Indians. In 2005, it started operations in India, and in 2009 had the highest level of gross bookings of any Indian OTA.

The business earns most of its revenue from flights. In 2010, revenues less service costs from air were $31.1M while hotels and packages were worth $8M.

The company's co-founder and CEO Deep Kalra was VP, Business Development at GE Capital.

Investors are seeing a big difference between travel models like Priceline which has health margins vs. those of Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity which are seen as increasingly commodity players. We expect investors will view MakeMyTrip as a commodity player and will not be too excited about it.

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