About Deep Kalra founder of Make my trip

3. EDUCATION &JOB
• BA from St Stephen's college, and then
an MBA from IIM Ahmadabad.
• After three years in banking and exploring
various options in marketing (Arvind Mills
and Pizza Hut among them), Deep chose
to do something ‘crazy’.

4. • He joined AMF Bowling, which pioneered the
concept of bowling alleys in India .
• Although Deep worked for AMF as an employee, it
was entrepreneurial for two reasons.
– The fixed salary component was low, it was based around
bonuses and how much equipment you sold.
– Second, there was very loose support from the US office.
Apart from equipment support and service support, you
pretty much did your own thing.

5. INTO BUSINESS
• The years 1999-2000 were a great time for
start-ups. You could run a dotcom business
with a small amount of capital. And even that
could be raised fairly easily from VCs.
• “The first guy I met gave me the money. He
was Neeraj Bhargava, Managing Partner of
eVentures. We actually closed the deal sitting
in a café in the Crossroads Mall on a paper
napkin!”

6. • Deep rues how ill informed he was. After
consulting a couple of friends he agreed to
give away 70% of the company for two
million dollars funding.
• Luckily, he got a second chance to get it
back.
• When the dotcom bubble burst, eVentures
packed up from India and made a distress
sale.
• Deep bought out his own company with his
life savings. And that's when he believes he
really became an entrepreneur.

7. DIFFICULT ROADS AHEAD….
• Within two to three months, it was apparent that, in
the India of 2001, no one was buying online.
• Lots of lookers, very few bookers. Everyone was
coming to the site and saying “Wow, this is cool.”
But that was it.
• “The first metric that I learnt to measure in this
business was the cost of customer acquisition.
• We now do it as a crazy science. We monitor it by
the hour. Our web analytics, the real core of MIS,
is the DSS of this business, ie, the Decision
Support System. It's amazing what you can get.”

8. • It became clear that ‘India focus’ was
pointless.
• So makemytrip simply stopped marketing
in India. All energies were focused on US
based NRIs. And that saved the company.
• NRIs were used to buying online.
• Also they had a natural reason to come to
India year after year. Kids were being
born, marriages were happening, so on
and so forth.”

9. • Now the company was faced with another
decision point - should it launch a real quick
with a rough and dirty site or be build the
coolest site in the world and take 6-9 months
to launch?
• “ I am glad we chose the first. Because we
launched in September 2005, when nobody
else was in the market. ”
• “That made us synonymous with the term
‘online travel’. And we still occupy that space.
Even though other portals have gone crazy
advertising.”

10. CURRENT CHALLENGES
&PERFORMANCE
• The current challenge is to make the India
business profitable. But the growth story has
been astounding.
• By March 2008, makemytrip achieved $250
million in sales, ie, approximately Rs 1,000
crores.
• That translates into $20 million in
commissions or Rs 80-90 crores.
• 70% of the business is now from India, with
close to 10,000 tickets being sold online each
day.

11. • The big challenge now is to sell other products
online. With hotels, makemytrip is beginning to
see a breakthrough. Still, a big change of habit
is required.
• Then there is the sale of holiday packages.
Mostly people collect information online but
purchase offline, from a real human being.
• This is why makemytrip now has an 'army' of
people selling packages over the phone. The
company has set up 20 ‘travel stores’ across the
country to be able to sell holiday packages to
the various regional markets

12. • But you have to learn. You can never say
‘Hum toh online hai, kabhi offline nahin
jaayenge.’ You don't define your business
too narrowly. Travel means travel - on
land, on sea, on air, offline, online, under
the line, whatever.
• You start with an innovation, but then you
extend tentacles into the regular side of
the business as well.

13. • Of course all this growth did not just happen.
Cash had to be burnt to build a national brand,
so investors once again came into the picture.
SoftBank Asia Infrastructure Fund was the first
to invest.
• In subsequent rounds, Deep took money from
three other funds - Helion Partners, Sierra
Ventures and Tiger Global.
• Deep's investor philosophy is simple, “I have
only taken in capital from guys who I think can
add value to us”.

14. FAMILY SUPPORT
• Luckily Deep got family support.
• His wife always said, “You have got to do
what you love.” And that was how he left
ABN with no regrets.
• During the makemytrip crisis she said, “You
have put in so much, you are seeing promise
in it. I don't understand business the way you
do, but if you think it's getting better month
on month, and at some point it's going to be
a good thing, then let's just go ahead and do
it and make it happen.”

15. • She even offered to go back to working
fulltime.
• The one thing she never said was,
“Listen, let's just play safe!”

16. I