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How MakeMyTrip succeeded in 2006 by leveraging omnichannel distribution

Rahul Chandra · Episode 54 | Rahul Chandra, Managing Director, Unitary Helion Fund · Mar 2, 2020 · at 16:09

Rahul Chandra (co-founder of Helion Ventures) explains how MakeMyTrip navigated low internet penetration in India to become one of Helion's biggest fund-one winners.

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“And, ah, this, you know, almost at the same time, we backed a company called Make My Trip, which was, ah, you know, I think way ahead of competition even back then. Ah, thankfully, it has retained that, ah, lead And it was making itself widely available through an Omni channel. It was available at a neighborhood corner store. It could be, you know, a service that you could call in and it was everywhere. I think people just prioritized it like a train ticket, and they were making effort to, you know, book their tickets online through MakeMyTrip. So that company because of the, You know, the pain point it was solving, which was actually very universal, was able to grow at a very rapid pace, and the ecosystem the friction in the ecosystem actually did not impact it as much as it impacted the other companies that we backed. So, MakeMyTrip turned out to be a big winner, as we all know.”

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