2 days ago
Yatra Is Betting on Corporate Bookings to Steady Profits: What the Numbers Say
Yatra is trading some headline consumer volume for steadier, higher-value corporate bookings. The last quarter shows early signs that the shift is working.
Indian online travel company Yatra plans to grow its corporate travel business further. Whole Time Director and CEO Dhruv Shringi said the strategy for the company would be to focus on higher-value, repeat corporate customers rather than price-driven leisure traffic.
For the quarter ended June 30, Yatra reported a stronger share of gross bookings coming from its B2B business. Shringi said roughly 67% of gross bookings came from B2B and that the share could move toward 70% by the end of the fiscal year.
Yatra is trying to make its platform part of corporate customers' routines. That creates what Shringi called 'switching costs,' which means extra effort for a company to move away once they're integrated. He noted that most competitors still serve companies in an offline way. Yatra says it has deeper technical integration with customers and higher online penetration. This, the company argues, gives it an edge as companies digitize travel processes.
'Most of our competitors still service customers in the offline manner with minimal amount of integration. That is why there is a large opportunity for us right now to go and penetrate the digital adoption that's happening in mass across the industry,' Shringi said at the earnings call on Monday.
Last year, Yatra announced its acquisition of Globe All India Services (Globe Travels), a corporate travel services provider, for INR 1.28 billion ($15.25 million) in cash.
Long-Term Clients and Stickiness
Long-standing corporate customers are central to Yatra's strategy.
Shringi noted the tenure among big clients as evidence of the company's stickiness. 'If I look at our top 100 customers, 73 of those have been with us for more than five years,' he said. Those relationships, the company believes, deliver predictable revenue and operating leverage once technical integrations are in place.
While online travel platforms chased consumers with discounts and marketing, Yatra flipped the script. 'Our annual retention rate (for corporate travel) is upwards of 97%,' he added. 'That's what gives us this kind of high operating leverage in the business.'
What is Driving Profits?
Shringi pointed to two main drivers of margin improvement. First, Yatra reduced direct discounting to customers. Instead of heavy price cuts, the company relied more on offers delivered through banks and marketing partners. That lowered Yatra's cost of acquiring customers.
Second, the business mix shifted toward higher-margin products: corporate airfares, hotels and packages. 'Hotels and packages have net margins closer to about 11% compared to about 3%-4% net margin for air. Our mix of hotels and packages, year over year, has changed from about 15% to about 20% of gross bookings,' he said.
Those changes helped push the company's net margin and revenue-after-cost measures higher than the raw growth in gross bookings.
Financial Results and Growth Levers
Yatra reported a year-over-year rise in gross bookings of about 9% for the quarter, reversing earlier declines in overall volume. The recovery was uneven: air ticketing improved modestly, while hotels and packages grew faster.
The company is leaning on cross-selling hotels to corporate customers as an immediate growth lever. Several recent corporate wins were 'hotel-led,' meaning customers first used Yatra for hotels, which then opened doors to broader travel services. Hotels and packages are currently the higher-margin, easier-to-cross-sell products for Yatra.
On the quarter's key numbers:
Revenue from operations grew by 108% year-on-year to INR 2.1 billion ($24 million) in the first quarter.
Adjusted EBITDA surged 138% year-on-year to INR 249 million ($2.8 million).
The company's net profit was up 296% compared to the same period last year to INR 160 million ($1.8 million).
The company continued to expand its corporate client base and closed 34 new corporate accounts during the quarter with a potential annual billing of INR 2 billion ($23 million).
What am I looking at? The performance of travel tech stocks within the ST 200. The index includes companies publicly traded across global markets including both online travel booking companies and B2B travel tech companies.
The Skift Travel 200 (ST200) combines the financial performance of nearly 200 travel companies worth more than a trillion dollars into a single number. See more travel tech financial sector performance.
Read the full methodology behind the Skift Travel 200.
