Kevin May:
Hello there, welcome to another episode of how I got here. These are mozia and focus why focus the start again. First time I’ve ever done that 331 Hello and welcome to how I got here. This is mozia and focus wise weekly podcast where we interview the innovators and entrepreneurs in travel and transportation. Thank you very much for everybody tuning in as always, a very warm welcome this week to Roger McGough. He is the group CEO and a co founder make my trip which most of you will know is the giant India based online travel agency read Jesse’s backstories quite interesting. He joined the company as co founder with alongside deep carer in 2001. And then there was a we’ll get into this in a moment with the agenda. There was a time when he was kind of working on the E book as part of what was going on. They’re in India. But then came back full time in 2005 2006, which actually does coincide with when things really did start to ramp up for make my trip around that time of my trip is now a publicly listed company. And it’s gone on to great and powerful things and has interesting agreements with the likes of sea trip in many of its later years. So we’re going to get into all that. But first of all, a very warm welcome, as we say to judge Miguel, thank you very much for joining us for jash.
Rajesh Magow:
Thank you. Thank you, Kevin, for having me. And thank you for the kind words and introduction as well.
Kevin May:
no bother at all, as is tradition with how I got here podcast. Each week with our guests. We asked them to give us a bit of their backstory with the question, how did you get here?
Rajesh Magow:
Yeah, sure, Kevin. And let me just take a step back and tell you about the incredible journey for the last 20 years now. Incidentally, this is the 20th year because my trip was born in 2000 when the the Kalra who had set it up, you know, on April one 2000. And then I, along with a couple of other co founders, and such in, joined him as part of the founding team. And that’s how the journey began. And so, you know, while a lot of people would probably in today’s time in the travel would be thinking more about COVID. So it will be fair to say everything till now was pre COVID. And then post COVID, we will get into, you know, what is going to be the industry or outlook and how do we think about make my trip, but just talking about pre COVID or before COVID ABC if you want to call it economic rather than being before Christ, I guess before COVID now, in light of rain, but you know, it can easily be divided into, I would say about four phases very quickly, and I’ll explain you about these four phases. The first phase was very humble. Very started, like, from 2000 to 2005. And as we set it up, you know, we had all kinds of crisis that hit us, like, you know, talk about 911, talk about, talk about combos, and, and later down 2008 financial crisis as well. But that was like second phase item two. But from 2000 to 2005. India wasn’t really ready for internet, I think we were ahead of our times, we realized that because internet ecosystem was not really robust at that point in time, from bandwidth to digital payment ecosystem and so on, into the fundamental ecosystem was not really ready. So that went with, you know, it was obviously full of challenges as you could potentially imagine, from building the startup slowly and gradually to facing the challenges, you know, and the resilience test and you know, having a cash crunch and so on and so forth. In fact, you know, the the money that got committed to us during that phase by a VC actually ended up shutting the shop. Thanks to.com bust as well. And that all of that happened. So that was like first phase full of learnings. And during that phase that we had an E book or as as you mentioned, literally dealing deal with them as well, where the p&i, we’re kind of leaving that deal. Doing the jewel kind of a role to set the India operations for them. He because we’re struggling from a cost optimization standpoint, so they looked at India as a BPO. You know, emerging BPO, you know, kind of country, if you will, and they came to India, and they were looking for a management team, and they’re looking for travel domain and online. And they found my trip, had all of it
Rajesh Magow:
in there, and then and then we struck a deal with them. So as part of that deal, I actually went the other side for setting up the India operations and then when I kind of moved back, you obviously stayed in touch all the time. The patient And when India was getting ready in September 2005, which I call 2006 to 2010, as the second phase of my trip, you know, I was back to make my trip to just relaunch and reset it up and, and then build from there together with the other co founders that were already there. And that phase was very interesting, high growth phase. You know, we never looked back, the internet ecosystem was improving. We were going from strength to strength. And guess what, in four years flat, we would actually, you know, very close to kind of hitting the milestone, which led to IPO which was probably one of the defining moments for for make my trip in August 2010. When we IPO, we were like at a $40 million revenue. And it was a blockbuster IPO for whatever it’s worth at that point in time. So that was the second phase ended on an honor Hi, when we got into the third phase, which was about 2011 to 2017, where we were expanding life as a public company started is level of scrutiny, highest level of corporate governance, the quarterly pressures and the end works. And but we kind of, you know, keep kind of embracing that, if you will. And, and, and by then I had kind of, you know, also changed had from a CFO position to a CEO position. So we had a new CFO came on board, right after IPO and all that, I would also call this phase as building the hotel business, because we were predominantly our business and profitable when we IP owed in 2010. So, and by the time 2017, we reach 2016 17. We were like 50% of our business was from hotels. So that was like building and scaling up the hotel business which was a very which was The defined strategic objective even at the time of IPO, so, that was probably the highlight and I think it was also the highlight which is which brings me to the to the, you know, last phase of the for COVID, if you will, where the market disruption happened, you know the lot of the, the explosion, if I may call it in the internet stocks happened, India started to get a lot more capital A lot more market disruption, and people started burning a lot of money in cash and in the pricing, well let disruption happen. And that is where, you know, it kind of the overall dynamics in the marketplace kind of led to a consolidation move. And we had IV Bo, which was kind of a number two or ta in the market. Way to go IV Bo as well as red birth merged with us. So we became like a strong three brands entity you know, about around 2016 17. And ever since that now, if I talk about, you know where we are today, they’re like three years into the module, very strong three powerful brands leading market share, you know, good, good kind of market cap, and then looking into kind of just getting to now all brands together on parks to profitability. So clearly It has been an overall incredible journey for the last 20 years.
Kevin May:
Okay, thank you very much. That was great. So let’s go right back. I’m always interested in a bit like superheroes the origin stories for people I mean, how did you and deepen the others that really initial kind of group that team? How was that assembled? Like the Avengers almost, I mean, how what’s that backstory there?
Rajesh Magow:
Yeah, no, I think it’s it. It’s obviously a fair question to ask and it’s quite interesting story by the way, you know, I don’t know how many people know this but beep is the one who actually founded it we were not you know it’s not that the founding team came together to set it up we actually met in matrix so deep is the one who had this idea built it we all kind of like the idea so one by one you know four of us that is mean it’s such in Bhatia kale Joshi in fact such inbody and kale juice Shiva, they came on board just before I came on board, and that’s how we kind of got together so we actually met at make my trip. And it’s kind of an interesting story that between you know, when, when people and I interacted for the first time, so we kind of liked each other, you know, we were we were, you know, I was kind of sold on the more than the the business model at that point in time because introverts internet was ahead of its time at that point in time, but you know, I had the desire to work in an entrepreneurial setup, working with the you know, now I can say hindsight the person like people was the who was entrepreneurial and visionary. And that’s how we kind of got together. And in between there was a situation that developed a little bit which was interesting where when I was in the middle of kind of my notice period from the previous employer and looking to join with my trip, the situation started developing at make my trip where we see it started pulling back the money and then I get a call from from the insane listening and for a gentleman he explained me the position because he had given me you know, the situation that we are kind of okay we have money in the bank, this much is committed, etc, which was decent enough and then of course, I was supposed to come on board and and contribute in and also kind of take care of that as well. If you will, given that I was going to join him as CFO, so it was totally fair, but then the situation developed. And then he came back and said, Listen, this is what is the development and also, you know that the incumbent CFO who was on board at that point in time also had a situation with Enron going first. And then, you know, he was in the middle of kind of thing that you know, what do I do kind of thing so, so he asked me a question. So he said, Listen, you know, what are you I hope you are on board and you’re not thinking twice and all that but I wanted to be in full in spirit of full disclosure, shared this development with you. And I remember telling him that, you know, sink or swim we can, we will be together, I have no problem because I’ve moved on. So even if the situation has developed on the funding side, it’s okay, you know, as long as you are thinking it from a long term standpoint, and you are there and then we’ll come and kind of together figure out the solution and all that. So that was a little interesting trivia. But in me and him when I came on board, but but all of us actually met at make my trip. We were not either friends are from the same school or college before.
Kevin May:
It’s it’s interesting that first I mean, you’ve referenced it in your in your initial kind of summary of the business in your time with it. But, you know, that first year and a half, two years was was was fairly traumatic for any kind of young business, whether you as you said there was there was 911 and the the kind of the remnants of the.com crash and just everything that was going on in the travel industry post 911. I mean, what do you think? And how did the business kind of prepare itself to get through that or would it be fair to say that there was some good fortune as well involved?
Rajesh Magow:
Yeah, and most definitely, and in fact, it does play a role, you know, on little bit here and there, but I guess the you know, When I looked back, and I kind of see the couple of things kind of stand out. One, I think there was a conviction in the model per se. So, you know, the conviction in the model got us going, right? Something, you know, the module is not necessarily new, it was a proven model under the markets, it was a matter of time, it was not the question in our mind that whether it will succeed or not, I think that conviction existed, and that got us going. And then with that, when that was very clear in our head, then it was just a question of managing resources, trying to make sure that how do we make sure then then the fundamental ecosystem improves, we kind of are still there, you know, bootstrapping, you know, maybe borrowing money, and we’ll be pulling in our own funds, just managing the situation. And we were also lucky, by the way, and I think that’s what happens in a challenging situation that you will think harder and you will come up with some kind of a model that will help you survive during this crisis time. And, and maybe even We’re lucky that little bit as well that we managed to, to get one niche model going which was us Indian residents based out of us, non resident Indians coming back to India so that was actually a legacy business. So that’s how those five years Believe it or not, we survived on that model where we didn’t have to sell the online piece of it, we actually had our little call center in in Delhi, a very small modest call center with a one 800 India 10 number for the non resident Indians based out of us who were familiar with online portals will come on our portal in the US we had a tiny office there in us, we still have that and, and they would call upon the call center, we will give them special ethnic fares and then they will travel back to India. That’s how we used to get some revenue going. And, and it was a very niche kind of a model which you know, it did not Have any kind of skip competition, if you will. So it helped us get some cash and then the because we will help the help helped us get some cash as well. And then we kept working on the product. We also did one important thing that we actually cut back on marketing immediately realizing that India wasn’t really ready. And therefore, you know, when when when we raised another round of capital when, when sky started to open up the low cost carriers came in came up in 2005, September 2005, to be precise, is when we relaunched it. So during that time, I think the learnings is that you know, one of course you have to be convinced that you are here for long haul it can’t be short term, so you can’t be panicking and you can’t be you know, having doubts in your mind about the model per se pivoting can happen, the tweaks can happen, but it doesn’t mean that You know that the model is going to fail as long as you have the conviction and the proof of concept. And once you have that, then it’s all about just, you know, managing it very, very frugal. And keep doing the right kind of stuff on the product side, till the market opens up, and then you can, you know, kind of go back and relaunch, obviously, a test of resilience. When you look back, because those were the times, by the way, we were all professionals, and we had opportunity cost, all of us we were not straight out of school or college, we were actually, you know, already senior management, you know, kind of employees in our previous class, right, I mean, you know, deep, deep was working as vice president in GE, I was heading north zone for aptech, which was an education company. And then I was working with the startup before I joined make my trip, but we were all established or, you know, kind of reached a certain level of, you know, kind of experience in the corporate world. So we were rolling There’s limited opportunity costs. But I think what what what got us going was the conviction and the faith in the, in the belief in the mind.
Kevin May:
What definitely the last one for me before I hand over to David, I’m, I’m curious about the ebookers period, primarily because you know, I’m here. I’m from the UK, I’m based in the UK. And when I first started writing about the travel industry, which was in 2005, the E book has CEO, Dinesh Sharma who, I’m sure you know, was kind of held up as this almost kind of legendary figure in the UK as one of the kind of the pioneers of of online travel agencies in the UK. And then he sold and kind of just became a recluse. And you know, His story is almost legendary in itself. But, I mean, you would have been involved in that ebookers periods then and would have known Dinesh very well is there was there anything that you learned from him specifically that you then took on into the those Kind of formative years of my trip after things started ramping up in 2005, just because he was this kind of legendary figure, or at least there was an aura about him for sure.
Rajesh Magow:
Absolutely. actually a very, very interesting question. And I did leverage all the experience that I actually got in ebookers setting up in India, all kinds of processes. You know, what we were trying to do was to actually move a lot many processes from ebookers UK in Europe, because they were kind of struggling with their costs structures, because it was damn expensive. And you know, travel is a low margin business. And Dinesh the Meijer actually had, you know, one of the qualities that he had was that he, he was clear, what was the end goal for ebookers? So obviously, he was, you know, looking for a potential exit at some at some point in time, giving the returns to the, to his stakeholders, and therefore, you know, one of the issues that he was encountering At that point in time was the cost structure. You know, ebookers headquarters used to be in London, which was you know, Paddington street in London used to be time and, and so real estate right. And then then Europe expansion that happened. It was an interesting kind of transition from flight Booker’s, by the way I’m sure you would know, like Lukas, which was an offline travel company to come to ebookers. So because he saw online travel coming, you know, much ahead of probably many others. So from that point of view, I think he was like, clearly, first, first off the blog there in that in that market, but the interesting piece, you know, where, you know, I learned a lot was also too specific to travel, as well as online travel was a lot of every little process, whether it was a sales process or as a service process is a voice process or, you know, email back office support me migrated IT services we built up financial services. You know, it’s the whole travel come online travel company, all aspects of the business. We actually migrated and, and learned and delivered out of the ebookers India office, it was actually from scratch literally, there was like from the first employee, literally brick by brick we built and when when I kind of exited when I was an acting acting CEO for the India operations. We were like 1500 2000 people, so and a variety of processes that we had migrated. So that really really helped me so you know, so my kind of coming back home to make my trip in early 2006 when we relaunched. I was very well equipped. From the learning standpoint, if you will, from you know, because, you know, every aspect of online travel business at at a scale, I had dealt with. So that obviously helped me to apply all of that learning back here at make my trip and you know, which was from 2006 onwards, and then we just, you know, kind of kept building up, kept scaling up the operations. But they were clearly learnings when you would do your board meetings with the minister Meijer and his wife, Dan in the media used to be involved as well, from their point of view, the biggest one that stands out for me, they, I think, the clarity of thought, and the goal was very, very, very clear. You know, this was the end goal, and that’s where he was kind of driving is, you know, execution roadmap, if you will.
David Litwak:
Well, it’s funny, I was actually about to ask my first question was going to be in depth on ebookers there because I just as a comment, now, it seems like you You basically kind of drafted off of them for four to five years where you basically they paid you to learn all the ropes and for you to kind of wait For the right timing for the Indian market to mature, would you would you agree with that characterization?
Rajesh Magow:
I think it kind of worked out like that. I don’t think it was by design, obviously not because you know, the deal of the deal actually came to make my trip. Now my introduction to ebookers was biometrically we were actually building it together at one point in time deep and I were doing it together dual role I was also supposed to be involved in make my trip. So was he, uh, but then one thing led to another and then I switched but you know, I think good too. Yes, it wasn’t like by design, it definitely happened. But it kind of helped immensely, for sure. Because my knowledge about the online travel full aspects of Business at a scale definitely helped me bring all those learnings back into make my trip and then you know, kind of build and scale up the company along with deep and the others, too, to greater heights as we are today.
David Litwak:
So I wanted to kind of Delve into that, so timing is a really is a, I feel like the number of you know, great ideas out there, you know, web van before, you know instacart and kind of stuff like that timing is everything. You guys clearly, you know, launched a little, little something term, the timing was wrong, when it did the ebookers kind of gig and came back in 2005 What was it about 2005 that you guys started seeing it was it your the low cost carriers and that was it, that basically said you know, the timing is right, India is going to be, you know, Ascendant
Rajesh Magow:
by two or three things. So low cost carriers was definitely one of them. And then there is also an Indian Railways portal that kind of started called irctc. That opened up as well. And then more importantly, the internet. You know, penetration started to improve the internet infrastructure, relative to 2000 started to improve it was actually still very poor. It was, you know, the broadband wasn’t really their broadband By the way, for the longest time till even 2010 was abysmally low. It was a narrow brand narrow, narrow band for all these years, but it was better than what it was in 2000 the payment gateways the digit digital payment ecosystem started to improve. So it gave it give us an impression that one on the travel side, it’s kind of opening up the second is the internet ecosystem that is improving and, and and you know, so the uni dimensional products like ticketing like a ticketing, you know, or for that matter, subsequently that opened because Indian Railways was actually initially not distributing through otas. But subsequently then they decided to do it. But if they were all uni dimensional products, they were not like, very involved buying kind of products online. Unlike hotels, you know, because hotels took a lot more time it also needed high quality bandwidth, because of the content that you have to render is pretty rich. So, you know, those are the few developments at that point in time, that helped us decide. And then of course, you know, when we, we were also exploring to raise more money. And, you know, a partner at that point in time kind of looked at it from a, you know, VC standpoint. And also felt that, you know, the time is perhaps now right for us to relaunch. So, I guess the bunch of factors came together for us to, to think that it probably is the, you know, appropriate time to relaunch it.
David Litwak:
So, kind of, as you relaunch this, you know, you mentioned that you this was obviously a tried and true model, the OCA model that you were applying to to India and so, I find that that was always wonderful, growing pains stories when I whenever as someone’s applying a, like a tried and true model to a developing economy like that, and I’d love it. If you could kind of elaborate a little bit more on kind of like, what were some of those? Those kind of misconnections moments between you and the market? You guys were trying to address?
Rajesh Magow:
Yeah, no, it’s a great question, actually. You’re so right, because they they, especially in the developing and emerging countries, there are nuances which are very different. And therefore, just the, the, you know, although only a model was tried and tested in the Western world, but you would not necessarily be able to do complete copy, paste. I think that is the biggest mistake that anyone can do when you are looking at evolved models who have done really, really well, trying to take it to an emerging market without understanding and knowledge of that market than once is that that kind of brings in I’ll give you a very interesting one. And I think, at some level, it was embarrassing at that point in time. We did not have a ticket. We had paper tickets, you know, so when we relaunched It was not electronic ticket. It was all paper tickets, and we used to actually You know, package all those wicked paper tickets in the careers and then send every at the end of every day we were inundated where you know by bookings at that point in time because the alternative was damn painful or opaque for that matter, right it was not transparent at all with the with offline traditional travel agent and as it was launched, it became very popular because it was user friendly, it was also very transparent and so on. So from a consumer perspective, we had a lot of traffic coming on our total right away, but we didn’t know what to do because we couldn’t actually fulfill it because it was all it wasn’t like electronic. It is not like today that you know, you you make the payment and then you have the within few seconds you actually have your electronic ticket or hotel voucher or booking voucher with you for every booking. So you know and stuff like that when you start looking at it. And similarly on the supply side, it was not a plug, plug and play. Remember that, you know, we we were the first ones to actually build direct connects with the low cost carriers they it did not exist, they didn’t even know you know how to do it because you know, if you if you look at the evolved markets on the air side, you will have GDS connectivity, which is hosting the entire you know airlines content and and there is a clear connectivity between GDS and the and the otas. And you actually have end to end kind of booking experience, which was not a cakewalk. In India, it was completely different, because for low cost carrier, you had to do direct connect, there was no GDS element in between, and you have to just work on these direct connects and then kind of go through all the nuances along with them. So it has been a major evolution. And similarly, if I just, you know, kind of also talk about hotel supply side network, given the fact that it was highly fragmented and most of them emerging market is highly fragmented, it is not necessarily consolidated, confined to you know, few handful of chains, who are one tech savvy and also there are, you know the platform that are hosting their contents and then you can just go and plug and play, you actually have to do a huge amount of heavy lifting in terms of giving them access to a user friendly technology or tool that you will build and invest behind and then educate them to adapt because adoption is also really really poor. It takes years together for them to be able to just get used to it and do it in most of the times you have to end up doing manually with your own team. While you are going through this growing pains and so on. So, you know while on the face of it will look like that everything is hunky dory on an online side, but in emerging markets. It is actually backside back end is at times is very clunky. Over the years it gets streamlined and becomes completely seamless and frictionless.
David Litwak:
So what are some? Like? I’m curious, what are some of the things you did to kind of, you know, he said it’s hunky dory on the front end, but, you know, it’s almost like scotch tape on the back end. I remember hearing a story about in India in particular, and I don’t know if this is legit or not, but I’m just gonna throw out there anyways, is that an Amazon competitor in India, I was struggling with how to deliver their packages in India and they literally hired the ex. That sorry, not actually the current kind of your equivalent of the ups that your your normal national mail people during their off hours. So if they work from nine to six, they’d hire them from six to 10. And those people knew their neighborhoods really well. And that was their kind of hack because they’re in a lot of India, there wasn’t real addresses. And actually, I just reminded that when you mentioned the thing about careering your, your tickets to People and I’m just like, I think that you like a lot, so many developing, you know, company start developing country otas Yeah, you have this like beautiful interface that actually looks like everyone else’s, you know interface like what we’re experiencing right here on the back end, you know, duct taping everything back together. So
Rajesh Magow:
yeah, no, absolutely. And by the way, in the spirit of disclosure, I will tell you that Amazon competition in India is Flipkart and I’ve been on their boat for many years as well.
David Litwak 31:27
They do that.
Rajesh Magow:
They did that in the past. And boy, absolutely. I heard
David Litwak 31:37
that story. And I kept on trying to find a way to verify it. And I knew was Flipkart. I like but yeah, that’s, that’s great. I’m glad to hear that.
Rajesh Magow:
God is also now you know, Walmart invested in Flipkart some time back as well. But you know, the product e commerce also went through this because they also had massive logistics operations to take Get over it. So the evolution on logistics and warehousing, by the way with where it stands today, and what it was few years about 10 years ago, there is a massive difference. There’s a sea difference in, you know, nowadays cutting edge technologies used even in their housing and so on. And so we’ve come a long way, in India, but that’s how it started. That’s how it started. And then like I was telling you our example, on the supply side, it was fairly clunky. In fact, you know, on the we at one point in time, we actually used to have massive in house call center operations, which was also true for you because for that matter, because and that was all sitting in India, which is what kind of optimize the cost for them. But I remember 2008 was our first kind of milestone rebadging deal with about 150 call center employees, you know, transitioning them to IBM docs at that point in time because we said, you know, Our DNA DNA for mcmurtrey was more tech oriented. And this whole call center back office operations could be better handled by the BPO outfit. And we revised and then, you know, we’ll be working on technology over the years to make the experience more self service. Rather than just going on call center, leveraging technology in this smartphones actually changed the game. You know, when smartphones came, India, like China became an app market. And that device kind of helped us to tremendously improved the experience overall, from a customer standpoint, end to end. So that has, you know, that has actually for the last five years, that has been a game changer in the online evolution of Indian online market as well.
Kevin May:
Now, right, yes, and I’m kind of jumping around a little bit in here in the timeline of the story, but this is this is all really good. I mean, I’m curious now. A little bit about the process that led up to the public listing. And it was it was such a major achieve. And I think for any, you know, an Indian tech company to do that, I mean, how did you as a team and yourself personally, kind of approach that phase and get through it in any kind of like, a war stories that you gained along the way that you that you’re able to kind of share with us through that process?
Rajesh Magow:
No, sure. I mean, it’s obviously a very, very defining kind of milestone moment for the company. I mean, personally, it was satisfying as well. I don’t for the whole management team, given you know, the kind of what it takes to kind of become a public company as well. But more from a process standpoint. And and before that may be interesting. So we are in fact, when we started kind of talking about that, you know, maybe there is a potential now we can just take the company to public, we started kind of thinking about it. You know, had a debate on on our board. And the bigger debate was whether we should list in India given that, you know, underneath businesses in India or should we list in you as in the house was kind of divided. It wasn’t like a unanimous kind of in the view, if you will, wasn’t that that we should list in us or India? So we kind of gone through that kind of went through that debate that happened. I think there was merit in the argument for India listing as well, given that, you know, the business the underneath visa business was in India, but we all things considered, we decided in favor of us, because the understanding of the internet business model was much more with the investor community in the US, as well as in the analyst community, and we weren’t really for whatever it’s worth. We’re concerned about. Corporate Governance level. It is or, you know, higher level of scrutiny, because of the fact that, you know, we believed, even in the private sector, we were actually running it quite professionally, we used to have independent directors much before we went public. You know, just to give you an example, to the level of corporate governance, we were all very comfortable, we were all professionals as a, as I mentioned earlier, you know, we so we had some experience of, you know, operating in large companies, and you know, how the corporate governance models kind of work. So I and fundamentally also, we kind of believe the net, that the, if you have to scale up the company, you have to put that kind of process and structure in place. So, as we were kind of going through this process, obviously, was very time consuming one side, you obviously have to, you know, make sure that the business goals are met, because if the business goals are not met, then all that hard work that you do from a pure IPO process standpoint, just whatever it takes to for you to be able to Do it from prospective stage to the, to taking the company public, everything and go waste. So you actually have to have independent parallel tracks. And a lot of people think that you know, there is a boardroom that is kind of just too few bunch of people kind of sitting and doing their process, which is true, which is a, you know, the whole finance team are critical people in finance team, the CFO obviously is, you know, up to its neck for this. And then there are lawyers, the auditors, the advisor, the bankers, you know, so you, you have all kinds of people who come together to kind of just
Rajesh Magow:
pull this one off, but most important aspect also is to also keep running the business and making sure the business goals are also met. And I think from my point of view, own vial on one track, it was important to them the process at a speed and I think we did it ended up doing it in a record time. A lot of people tell me that but you know, it was Okay, I mean, I, I didn’t pay that much attention to maybe the number of hours, we’ll say maybe we stretched along a lot more in that confined period of six months that we ended up kind of from end to end, deliver this project. But I think the important piece was, and maybe for the listeners as well, whosoever is thinking about it, and not to forget about the other important track, because you won’t be able to get out if your goals are not met, because at the end of the day, you are going to sell the story on the back of the business goals that you would have delivered. You know, not necessarily you are going to kind of go out and be tell Hammad, how hard working it was for the team for us to be able to get to that position. I don’t think that’s really and that’s important. You know, when you look at it from a different lens, but I think it’s critical to keep the the paler track going. I think that was the learning so the ability to keep both going at the same pace. mutually exclusively and not getting both the tracks getting going off track was the biggest one if you ask me and then of course the when you get there you ring the bell and all that is very, very satisfying. And I think the satisfaction comes from two aspects one that you deliver value to the stakeholders, existing stake stakeholders and the journey begins for the new ones. Right and you know, there was no doubt in our mind, it wasn’t the the exit for the the founders or the management team. It was actually the beginning, if you will, because the new investors come in and invest on you you raise money. And the second which is actually more critical was from the people side because we had a dp sock plan. And and seeing that people seeing suddenly the paper stock, very, very valuable was extremely satisfying for us. And you know, there are stories around people buying homes and stuff. So I guess those were really my moments.
Kevin May:
Yeah, I’ve heard deep talking about that before at a conference and one thing I’ve always been curious. Yeah. And I asked this question with as much respect as I can, but with a certain amount of curiosity, and that is often and not just in travel, but around many tech companies. It is such a milestone when they get to list publicly, that often the founding team do tend to drift away after that. It’s fairly unusual for at least two of the founders, yourself and deep 10 years on from that public listing to still be massively evolved and running the company. So before David wraps us up with his final question, I’m curious as to what kind of keeps you there because you’ve achieved so many milestones, and you know, personally, it would be okay. Well, I’m done. I might as well move on. So what does keep you there?
Rajesh Magow:
Yeah, no, I think it’s an interesting one. And this is you’re not the only one who’s been asking this question time. You know, we keep getting this question. Off and on because a lot of people actually see that happening in the future. The marketplace with many other companies. I think it’s a you know, from our point of view, which is perhaps sympathy, we did have two co founders who kind of moved on and and are doing their own businesses and stuff. Actually Kagura. Still on our advisory board section has been, you know, kind of involved in other projects. He’s now running another social ecommerce company. But from from deep in my point of view, I think it was more that we kept enjoying because we were running a public company. So there was an experience of running a public company, the experience of scaling up the company. And then there was market consolidation move happened. We became from one brand to we became three brands. And I guess, you know, we have over the last 10 years post IPO also, I don’t know whether there has been any dull moment to be honest. So it has just kept us very busy with the business with a thought that bestest Yet to Come. So you know, so when you keep thinking like that, and you’re still enjoying, I guess you don’t end up thinking maybe anything different. And then that is so true because we’ve just been very busy. Kind of running the running the business for the for the last 10 years and continue to believe that there is more headroom and there is more. There are more opportunities and, you know, milestone after milestone that you’ve been able to, to get to, and that is something that keeps you going, I would have thought.
David Litwak:
Thanks, Josh. So, one kind of raffle question. You said something interesting how a lot of people when they try to go to foreign markets, or apply a foreign concept to a their own home market. They just copy and paste is that the term you use and I like that. I don’t want to ask you, you know, what, what countries and what Markets right now, are you most excited about outside of India that you look at and go, you could either us could potentially expand and you think there’s a lot of opportunity. And also just kind of, I guess, extra credit question here is what you know, what company has had the most spectacular failure and copy and pasting into into a foreign market?
Rajesh Magow:
Oh, wow. The second one is an interesting one. And I don’t know if I can name one. But let me just tell you the first one first. You know, I think they have many interesting markets. And, you know, as we look around, you know, definitely all the emerging markets. I mean, I’m keeping China aside because China has evolved quite a bit already. But, you know, in Southeast Asia, Indonesia has been also very much, you know, great market, you know, great potential. Before that, if you look at it. On the other side, Brazil was a very good market as well. And now Vietnam is kind of opening up as well. I mean, you know, so there are These kind of hidden gems, if you will, where which would definitely be the, you know, kind of offer a lot of potential, if you will. There’s also an interesting market that we see from our point of view, barring the Southeast Asian market. It’s also Middle East market. I don’t think there is an OT a local otaa that has been well established, their writing is just more because of the acting this booking.com and all the global otas that are out there. I you know, and it’s also an emerging it’s also an interesting market from a potential standpoint. So, these are some of these interesting potential markets, which has a lot of potential and might be different, because you know, every unique every market is offer something unique has something very unique, which is not necessarily there in the West market, or for that matter, even in China or India for that matter, right. So as we Go, like, for example, we do have a red bus brand actually operating in some of these markets, we have externalize that brand, we’ve been able to take red bus to some of these markets, you know, with the same kind of playbook that we had built full stack. And you learn a huge amount of unique things in Indonesia, you know, like you would see in Latin in Latin, that there is a lot of, you know, the credit market is very different. So, you know, so the different markets will will offer potential huge potential will also come up with their own interesting nuances that you will have to be there and learn. I don’t think you can just kind of, you know, bring a concept and then just, you know, kind of just take a cookie cutter approach and kind of implement that that doesn’t work. In terms of your other question. I think that I without naming, I think it is just fair to say that you It will be more where the decision making is very centralized. But I still want to run an operation in an emerging market, I think that is where the biggest gap is because it doesn’t give agility to the local operations, you know, in terms of whatever you want to do. It is part of your running that business and also becomes very difficult for, you know, the local team and management to be able to just gather all the knowledge stitch everything together, I think they probably kind of get lost in back and forth more than they could, you know, if there was full fledged, empowered operations in the emerging markets, if you will. So that has been my observation. You know, which kind of is very different. I’m pretty sure that there are other ways of kind of, you know, these large global players also do it but you know, especially in emerging markets becomes really tough.
Kevin May:
Okay, Thank you very much for jest that was that was great. I mean, there’s some of your backstory there, we interviewed Stuart crighton, from cleartrip, just before in the back end of 2019. And he, he had some, you know, similar stories about what it was like in those early days in the mid 2000s, you know, creating that business in India as well. So it’s great to get your perspective as well. So, again, so thank you very much for just for joining us on how I got here.
Rajesh Magow:
Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thank you. I really enjoyed it. Thanks.
Kevin May:
Okay, that’s great. So, so that’s it for another episode of how I got here. That’s mosey on focus wise, weekly stories where we speak to the entrepreneurs and innovators in travel, and transportation. As always, you can find us if you haven’t subscribed already, to the podcast on Spotify, Alexa, Google podcasts, all the usual places. So go on there, give us a review. We always appreciate it. Thanks so much to everybody. Thanks. I’ve learned so much from David and I for tuning in. We’ll see you next time. Thanks. Thank
Rajesh Magow:
you David. And thank you, Kevin.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
