Trade Bytes

Cleartrip to explore inorganic opportunities

Chetan Kapoor - Mumbai

Taking a cue from Travelguru-Desiya collaboration, Mumbai-based online travel agent Cleartrip.com is looking at inorganic growth opportunities in both online and offline environments. Speaking to Express TravelWorld, Stuart Crighton, its COO, says, "Year 2007 was a pretty good one for us with a high consumer adoption rate and good growth. The challenge for an organisation like ours now is to continue to evolve in a healthy way both organically and inorganically. We are open to anything that fits with our model, which isn't purely online. We are also looking at opportunities for acquisitions."

The portal is also looking at developing new products including its international bookings offering which will be rolled out in some time. "We have huge targets for 2008 and will proactively try a variety of new opportunities to drive our revenue streams as we understand the consumer better now," he states. Cleartrip is also opening offices in various parts of India, the latest being in Bangalore along with a business unit. Delhi and Gurgaon too look attractive as "40 per cent of travel market comes from the north".

The portal was also amongst the first players to venture into the retail environment and will continue to penetrate the segment by opening more retail units. Crighton adds, "Although the contribution of retail to our overall business is very small yet, we are looking at about 10 per cent of our overall revenue targets coming from there in 2008. While this is a scaled business, we are never going to generate Rs 30 lakh out of a unit on a daily basis. But if we can scale a workable and profitable model between one and 50, then the economies of scale will start to kick in."

Likewise, airport counters will also be a key focus in 2008. What started as 130-140 search requirement daily at its recently-opened Hyderabad airport counter now sells 80 tickets daily. "Think about it from the consumer's perspective - it is intimidating in the morning with mile-long queues and missed flights. Instead of them standing in an individual airline queue, our platform becomes a great consumer benefit as they go to an environment where they get everything on one display with an option of buying as well. We are looking at taking it to airports in the northern and western region," informs Crighton.