Online travel agency Yatra.com has come up with a new facility for it’s users to book online cab aggregators like Ola and Uber through its mobile app. This move will not just add to their revenue but will also improve customer’s experience through added facilities.
Yatra will also allow booking of outstation cabs and self-drive cab services like Myles, ZoomCar etc. They will be charging a commission from the cab aggregators if bookings are done through the Yatra app. The company will be launching the intra-city and outstation cab service next week and integrate it’s self-drive platform at a later date. Yatra is also trying to automate their backend with the help of latest technologies like artificial intelligence to have an extra edge over its competitors like ClearTrip, GoIbibo, MakeMyTrip, Via.com.
This was not the first development that the Gurgaon-based company has done over the years. It is giving a one-to-one competition to its rivals like Ixigo.com. In April last year, Ixigo launched its own cab service called ‘ixigo cabs’ which can help travellers acquire information about all the cabs near them. Moreover, it launched a new feature in its app which can help users to book cabs by tapping a button even without a proper internet connection. It had also launched a new service, ‘ixibook’ which will help users book flights and hotels through their app.
In January, Yatra acqui-hired Travel-logs, a trip planning startup for an undisclosed amount. Travel-logs’ founder Dhiresh Sharma joined Yatra’s new wing Metro X which will allow customizing trips for users based on themes like architecture, heritage, culture etc.
In August last year, Yatra also partnered with FINO paytech which will allow users to book tickets through FINO money centres.
All these acquisitions and acqui-hires are an indication to the fact that the travelling industry is the new trend and is growing by leaps and bounds. Big players are all set to hire more and more travel related startups not for the product or service they provide but for the skills and expertise of their team.
According to Dhall, the ultimate goal is, “Customers get more options, while travelling aggregators get access to huge amount of traffic to their packages.”
