Indian online travel players hit accelerator....again!

The Indian online travel industry seems (in market designed to produce mixed metaphors) to burst in waves. Back in 2008- the four leading companies of India - Makemytrip, Cleartrip, Yatra and Travelguru seemed to have created a $2bb plus online travel market from a near standing start.

In their recent India report, PhoCusWright now puts the 2010 online travel market (leisure and un-managed business) at more than double 2008. $4.3bb is their size estimate, as much as 25% of the total travel market. They predict a rise to $7bb in 2012 (you can buy the report here). That would put the India of 2012 at the same size as the online market of Australia in 2010. An almost unrivaled acceleration in online travel. Like many markets online, the buying of low cost carrier tickets is a huge driver. But, unlike many markets, rail is a significant part of the grow story in India. Online rail in India is already more than a $1bb a year and is more than a quarter of the online travel industry's total turnover. In India (according to PhoCusWright), the percentage of rail online is twice the percentage of hotel online.

Corporate activity is accelerating alongside the market acceleration.

Number one player MakeMyTrip (MMYT) has been public for less than a year (IPO in August 2010). They went to the market at $14 and are still trading above $30 (Apr 21 at $32.23) with a valuation in excess of $1.1bb.

Cleartrip is chasing hard. They have just raised $40 mm from travel travel expense and management solution provider Concur (you remember them, they bought TripIt in Feb for up to $120mm).

Not to be left out, a day later Yatra announced they were raising $45mm from raised from Valiant Capital Management, Norwest Venture Partners, Intel Capital and others (WSJ story here). According to the WSJ this eclipes the $33.8mm they raised in the last round. The article quotes sources saying that a float in the next 12-18 months is very likely.

Expedia is also refusing to be left out. They have added India to their list of markets covered by their JV announced with Asian low cost carrier giant Air Asia.

Via is trying to argue there is room for more players. With $15mm raised so fare from NEA Indo-US Ventures, Sequoia Capital India and others, Via (also known as Flightraja) has mega bucks in their sites announcing last month they intend (emphasis on intend) to raise another $100mm.

Travelocity are trying to peek their head above the noise through a marketing relationship with Mastercard.

A very busy 30 days in a fast growing market. Did I miss anything? For the Tnooz latest list of top travel sites in India care of Hitwise click here.

Thanks to FriskoDude for the great photo via flickr

Buzz and $$ around Yapta

I missed the early stories around the fund raising of Yapta (Your “Amazing” Personal Travel Agent). In July last year they announced the raising of $2.3M from First Round Capital, Voyager Capital, Swiftsure Capital and Bay Partners. This came shortly after their May 07 beta launch and news (from TechCrunch) that they had put the product together on the basis of $750k in angel funding and 5,000 private beta testers. I was traveling at the time of their raising and had little to add the blog reports such as that from HotelMarketing.com. But buzz and news is coming from other sources since the fund raising.

On the traffic level, the company is now claiming that 250,000 shoppers have used the engine to track flight spending. CEO Tom Romary (ex-Alaskan Airlines, ex- Real Networks) translates this into searches of flights of a value of more than $400mm. On the staffing level, the company has been boasting board numbers with the appointment of David Falter as a Director. Falter is a ex-Cendantite having served as President of Galileo Americas.

Yapta’s meta-search functionality twist is it operates on the site of the supplier rather than its own site. With old school meta-search like Kayak a customer enters in search terms and waits for the results on the Kayak site before being sent to the site of the supplier to book. With Yapta the consumer tags/bookmarks the search combination on the supplier’s site with the Yapta tag. If the price drops Yapta sends an alert to the consumer. Reminds me of recent chat with VibeAgent CEO Adam Healey where he described the web and social networks as “containers” with product based companies like VibeAgent and Yapta providing the applications that sit in the container. To work it requires and download and currently only works on major US carriers so there is still work to do to go global.

Here at the BOOT we will keep a watch on this buzz. Just (I am sure) like the Yapta execs are keeping a watch on the $115mm cheque that Microsoft signed to get their hands on Farecast.

Quicky on fare comparisons for FastCompany

With Red Herring and Business 2.0 near death we turn to Fast Company to try an keep us up to date with the business side of the new economy. Here is a quick snippet from them on the new trends in fare tracking. In this brief piece FC tries to sum up the differences and value propositions of Farecast.com, FareCompare.com and recently boosted by $2.3mm in funding Yapta. Interesting and quick read.