MakeMyTrip Raises $3.1 Billion to Shrink Trip.com Group's Stake
MakeMyTrip said in a stock exchange filing last month that it was raising money to buy back shares, and after several repurchases during the quarter, Trip.com's stake is down to 16.9%.
MakeMyTrip said it is open to doing more buybacks later this year. 'We'll remain open to kind of dipping into further buyback even in the rest of year because we haven't really deployed directly from the balance sheet through the quarter,' MakeMyTrip Chief Financial Officer Mohit Kabra said during an earnings call Tuesday.
Following the announcement, Skift accessed the company's 6-K filing with the U.S. SEC, which also revealed a board overhaul.
Trip.com's right to nominate directors on MakeMyTrip's board dropped from five to two. Shortly after the share repurchases, three Trip.com‑nominated directors — James Liang, Moshe Rafiah, and Paul Halpin — resigned. Their departures were 'not due to any disagreement,' the company said.
MakeMyTrip added three new independent directors, including Kabra.
The compensation committee now includes venture capitalist Aditya Tim Guleri, Shanghai Sunnyview Eldercare Company Co-Founder May Yihong Wu, and Trip.com Group CEO Jane Jie Sun.
'The interests of Trip.com and its affiliates may be different from or conflict with the interests of our other shareholders,' MakeMyTrip had said last month in a stock exchange filing announcing the buyback.
Quarter in Review
Even as April was a typical high season with bookings up in the mid‑20% range. The terrorist attack near Pahalgam on April 22 disrupted travel, closed several airports until May 10. The Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad in June dented confidence further.
As a result, flight and leisure package bookings in May and June slipped below last year's levels. However MakeMyTrip's diversified mix of business and variety of travel and ancillary services helped the company to deliver a strong performance.
The quarter ending June 30 looked solid for MakeMyTrip:
Revenue rose 5.6% year‑on‑year to $268.8 million.
Gross bookings (the total travel spend on the platform) climbed 12.4% to $2.61 billion.
Adjusted operating profit improved by $8.2 million to $47.3 million.
Adjusted net profit grew by $4.9 million to $49.4 million.
'While domestic demand for leisure travel was particularly weak for domestic leisure destinations for air travel and holiday packages, being a one-stop shop on travel allowed us to drive growth from other travel services, other modes of transport as well as ancillary travel services catering to non-leisure travel use cases,' Group CEO Rajesh Magow said during the earnings call.
'We also continue to drive growth in international travel, where online booking wherever is growing and the overall demand was relatively less impacted… We managed to continue the growth momentum in our corporate offerings.'
MakeMyTrip Will Continue to Invest in AI
MakeMyTrip said it is also betting on artificial intelligence to stand out.
'We've seen a lot of promise coming out of Gen AI, and we've been investing significantly behind that, and we will continue to keep investing,' Magow said. 'We see it more as sort of leading the innovation through Gen AI, rather than overtly getting paranoid about potential disruption.'
The logic is simple. Over nearly two decades, MakeMyTrip has gathered data from 83 million customers across its brands. Every day brings huge web traffic, booking details, supply‑side signals and more. All that information becomes fuel for AI models. In turn, those models power features that make it easier for travelers to find, compare and book exactly what they want.
But AI isn't just about customer experience. It's also about working smarter. Wherever a process can be faster, cheaper or more accurate, be it handling support tickets, pricing cabins, or matching hotels to guest tastes, MakeMyTrip looks to AI for gains.
MakeMyTrip calls this an evolving space and admits it's learning as it goes. 'But we will continue to keep investing behind it. And we do believe we are in a better position given all the strengths,' Magow said.
Get breaking travel news and exclusive hotel, airline, and tourism research and insights at Skift.com.
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