India is doing a great job in coming out of the slowdown, but the need for better regulator remains. We must not let monopolistic powers establish a controlled environment in the market and exercise their powers for dominance, said Deep Kalra, Group Executive Chairman, MakeMy Trip, 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.
Kalra said that 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,” he added.
He highlighted the adverse situations his company was subjected to during the lockdown. While the executives at MakeMy Trip board-level took 100% pay cut, 50% cut was subjected to other senior members and 10% to other positions. The hardest thing for the MakeMy Trip 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.
