Aravind SundaramIndia is doing a great job in coming out of the slowdown, but the need for regulator remains. We must not let monopolistic powers establish a controlled environment in the market and exercise their powers for dominance, said Deep Kalra, CEO, MakeMyTrip, in a recent webinar series Talk with the Legends. The webinar interaction was hosted by Dr. Ajay Data, founder of Made in India app VideoMeet. Deep further added, “The days of pandemic reminded us of existential crisis and bootstrapping in its full form. Europe has done a great job in not giving an unfair advantage to giant-sized companies, and thereby the consumer interest has not been comprised.”
Being an industry leader in giving people international & domestic travel-stay experiences, Deep Kalra, CEO, MakeMyTrip, highlighted the adverse situations his company was subjected to during the lockdown. While the executives at MakeMyTrip board-level took 100% pay cut, 50% cut was subjected to other senior members and 10% to other positions. The hardest thing for the MakeMyTrip remained to retrench 10% of their workforce, which was a great lesson to learn. However, following the mantra of ‘Never waste a crisis’, the team worked on strengthening their relationships with the hotel industry, travel agents, bus operators etc. This alternative work done around this time has helped them to bounce back as domestic travel is back to 50% of their pre-COVID levels, and luxury hotels are providing them business opportunities more than what they were ready to in Pre-Covid times.
He also added, “MICE will be the slowest recovering segment in events and corporate travel due to the acceptance of remote working and virtual meetings. Solo individual trips and weekend getaways are currently bringing recovery to the industry.”
The talk enlightened the audience about changing nature of businesses, digital transformation among sectors and the survival strategies adopted by leaders to combat the slowdown. According to Kalra, India will see the emergence of around 2 million user base, who will be comfortably doing digital transactions post-Covid, this number stood at just 1 million before the pandemic; this reflects the gamut of opportunities fintech, healthtech, edtech will present in the coming times. Thousands of users attended the session via Laptop, Smartphones and Tablets on VideoMeet application.
Dr. Ajay Data, Founder of the VideoMeet App, host of the interaction in conclusion said, “Lockdown has taught us all to constantly look for alternatives and be prepared with our contingency plans. This has made the Indian businessmen and young entrepreneurs adopt digital tools more than before due to their accessibility and wide reach. As, it is only via Internet and the virtual meetings that seamless communication could prevail. Talk with Legends is our effort to bring business leaders to the forefront and discuss directly with the viewers their experiences and learnings during the difficult phase of lockdown.”
Aravind Sundaram
Guest Author