Given the huge growth in the mobile eco-system in India, MakeMyTrip is taking a big bet on mobile and pursuing a “mobile first way” approach rather than a mobile version of the desktop site.
Amit Saberwal, chief of business development for India’s largest OTA, which is ramping up expansion in Asia and recently acquired hoteltravel.com, said, “We enable our users to leverage mobile features like geo-location, local data caching and calendar integration to make their experience as seamless as possible with minimum user inputs and a concise product flow.”
The development of mobile and numbers in India speak for themselves. India is one of the countries where mobile has leapfrogged the desktop and for a large population, mobile is the device where they will access Internet for the first time. According to Google, there are more than 900 million mobile handsets in the country, out of which nearly 70 million mobile phones have data connectivity.
Saberwal said the country was seeing a huge burst in smartphone usage – there are currently more than 27 million smartphones and this number is growing at 100% annually.
As of today, MakeMyTrip has a mobile site for low bandwidth connections, a richer mobile site to provide app-like experience on touch screen smartphones and applications on Android, iPhone and Blackberry.
“Each of these offerings allow our customers to book flights, hotels, submit holiday queries and check/modify their bookings. In addition, we also have location specific features like places to eat that help our travelers with their needs when they have arrived at a destination.”
Flight Bookings are available on MakeMyTrip mobile site and the three apps – IPhone, Android and BlackBerry. 
Saberwal listed these key innovations:
• Search, compare and book flights
• Automatic Location Detection: The App auto-fills the airport nearest to your location.
• Zero Typing Traveller Information: Enter details once only.
• Mobile Payment Security: Pay through Credit Card, Debit Card or Net Banking on mobile. “We have one of the safest mobile payment gateways and support all major banks,” said Saberwal.
• Lightning Fast Mobile Flight Search: Searching, booking and paying are as fast and smooth as on a desktop.
• Location Based Recommendations
• Real Time Flight Schedules
The MakeMyTrip mobile website enables customers to
• book hotels anytime, anywhere across 10,000+ hotels across India
• access best last-minute deals available only on mobile
• pay-at-hotel at 2500+ hotel chains (travellers can book through mobile and pay directly at hotel while checking in)
• launch both location-aware and location-agnostic hotel search
• filter search results by price, ratings, and locality
“As an indicator of our success, our apps have been downloaded more than half a million times and we are seeing impressive growth on mobile-based flight and hotel bookings. Our iPhone app has been ranked as the Top Free iPhone App in India on Apple App Store.
“As a result of our strategies, we are seeing massive growth in mobile usage adoption with more than 12% of our site traffic going mobile growing at 200% YOY. Mobile is set to grow fast and we are placing a huge bet on this medium,” said Saberwal.
