“We are focusing on creating micro entrepreneurs pan India in form of franchise partners &All Women Holiday Experts,says, Jasmeet Singh, Senior Vice President & Business Head, MakeMyTrip – Holidays. Pent up travel demand across India post COVID has added to the already booming travel industry. Read further to know that how MakeMyTrip is leveraging the same by strengthening its presence via franchise model.
MakeMyTrip has always been a D2C brand and the leader amongst Indian online travel companies, what made the company choose omni-channel for its expansion?
MakeMyTrip has a wide spectrum of product offerings ranging from flights, hotels, homestays, holiday packages, train tickets, bus tickets, cab tickets and many others to choose from. Most of our product lines are self fulfilled across all channels besides holiday packages. For holiday packages as a product offering, we felt the dire need of having one-on-one conversation with our client. This made us broaden our horizon to offline channel. We also have a very interesting channel along with our franchise business model and that is All Women Holiday Expert spanning pan-India. We have 1500 holiday experts presently. This is a very unique business model for women working from home and does not require any prior experience. Between franchisees & holiday experts we do 70 % of our transactions. We plan to take this number to 2000 by the year end.
Kindly explain the present scale of your franchise business? And secondly what is the outlook you have for your company in the next two years?
We are fairly well spread pan-India, when we started in 2023, we had 146 franchisees actively. We have grown to 170 franchisees now and by the end of calendar year, we plan to take it to 220 franchisees. We would like to strengthen our business presence across Bharat. We are expanding in regions where we see travel demand and it also depends on our consumer behavior.
How is Franchising business model helping the brand?
The franchise model has been working in favor and has helped us achieve scalability. Our franchise business from both partner channels, franchisees & Women Holiday Experts contribute 70% in our business. So, it is fairly significant. From business contribution perspective, Franchising is helping us significantly. The franchise network expansion is part of our broader strategy to serve customers in the top 100 plus cities of India.
What kind of potential do you see for MakeMyTrip in smaller cities pan-India? Any business strategy or model have you incorporated to tap business expansion in the smaller cities?
Our main focus was to create micro entrepreneurs pan-India & we are doing the same via franchising. We have received a remarkable response from smaller towns and cities. Places like Zirakpur, Guntur, Kolhapur etc are amongst thetop performing cities.
Out of 170 franchisees, 25% of our franchisees are operating in tier II & tier III cities. These 25% of franchisees contribute 38 -40 % of our business. Tier II cities have been helping us to grow faster and strengthen our brand’s presence.
There are different product categories your brand offers, how does your inventory looks like today?
We are an omnichannel travel provider, so our product offering remains the same at online & offline platforms. We build packages as per regional demands. For example if Durga Puja is approaching, we will have very special fares & packages for Kolkata. 90% of our portfolio is common. We offer a seamless experience for our customers across all our channels.
What all transformations have you incorporated in your business model offline, post pandemic?
We have pivoted to purely franchise owned & franchise operated (FOFO) business from company owned & company operated stores. We started franchising pre Covid but the number of franchisees was very less. We purely operate via franchise business model now and do not have any company operated store now.
Any customization for smaller cities.
Our franchise fee differs from tier I to tier II cities. The idea is to make it work for our partners. We handhold our partners in terms of trainingand support to operate a store. If our partner needs our support in setting up the shop in smaller towns, weare flexible in terms of doing the same.
Any franchise related success story.
We have many. Starting from Mumbai, our franchisee who had one store initially is now operating five stores in the same region. Other success stories are from Kathua in Kashmir and Kolhapur to name a few, where our franchise partners have beaten the regular curve in terms of breakeven and have started producing amazing results in very less time.
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