The online travel industry makes around 61%, the largest share of eCommerce in India. Online travel, which includes domestic air ticket and railways booking, is positioned to grow around 40% to reach Rs 1,22,815 crore by end of 2016.

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Exciting times for online travel startups in India
eTailing India Thought Corner
The online travel industry makes around 61%, the largest share of eCommerce in India. Online
travel, which includes domestic air ticket and railways booking, is positioned to grow around
40% to reach Rs 1,22,815 crore by end of 2016.
Some big names in the space
IRCTC
It you are wondering that Flipkart is the biggest player in eCommerce sector, think again. Indian
Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) that runs the overloaded online railway
reservation systembeats all the odd to be the biggest eCommerce player. With over 1.2 crore
visitors a month, it is the most visited online travel site for commuters in India. It clocked a
turnover of Rs.1,500 crore in 2015-16. IRCTC has revamped its e-ticketing tech, naming it as
NGeT (next generation e-ticketing) system.

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MakeMyTrip
Makemytrip is one of the leading online travel companies in India which provides online travel
services including flight tickets, domestic and international holiday packages. Traffic from
mobile apps has grown 250-300% year- on-year in the past couple of years for them.
Yatra
Yatra is the one of the best online travel booking site where you can check the domestic and
international flights, weekend getaways, rail tourism packages, holidays, hotels and trains.
Emerging names:
Tripoto, iTraveller and Routofy has managed to make their way up the online travel startup
ladder.
Travel companies beef up online presence
Thomas Cook allows travelers to purchase foreign exchange and request for visas online.
Leisure travel major TUI India had launched a one-stop portal for customers to purchase a
holiday package and even avail visa services. We can see that more and more offline startups
have ventured online now.
"This can be mostly attributed to the extent of convenience and accessibility virtual platforms
offer,"said Amit Madhan, chief operating officer -IT and eservices -Thomas Cook India.
What the future holds in?
 Google Trips, a travel app of Google Inc. can give run for money to the online travel
startup players in India. It works offline also and the best part is, since it gathers
automatic information from Gmail and Google Maps, it can list out popular places along
with its estimated time to visit.

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 Information Technology is helping accelerate innovation and technology will play a key
role in the shaping the future of online travel startups.
Himanshu Verma, CTO, Yatra.com quoted, “Online travel is not convenient booking and
ticketing anymore and is moving towards providing a great travel experience, which requires
solving problems in each and every step of the travel experience.”
 The government in tourism development has been pushing for a renewed focus on the
travel industry. Online bandwidth, infrastructure and secured payment gateways are the
core areas to work upon in online travel ecosystem.
There lays an enormous opportunity presented by the unorganized hospitality sector in India.
It’s a good sign to see that many more travelers from the business-class category prefer
modestly-priced good quality hotel accommodation.