But then he is used to the hard knocks of life in an entrepreneur’s lane. And the last six months have certainly delivered more than its share of rude shocks to what’s been so far a fast and spectacular ride for Indian’s Online Travel Agents.

At number two position, Yatra had been growing nicely in its clearly-defined home patch. Unlike the market leader MakeMyTrip, Yatra has no overseas ambitions with Shringi saying, the Indian market is big enough for us.

This position, he said, has not changed even with the market being battered by internal and external shocks. The collapse of Kingfisher Airlines which took out 25% of capacity, fierce competition even as airlines are reducing commissions and a general slowdown in the market have combined to put pressure on the OTAs which have so far made their fortunes on flights.

Shringi said Yatra has had to cut costs, find ways to strike different deals with airlines and look for ways to add value to their customers. “Instead of commissions falling over two to three years, they did in one quarter so we had to find ways of dealing with that shock,” he said.

Low cost carriers now form 70% of the business mix for OTAs, up from the previous average of 55%, said Yatra, and that’s definitely had an impact on yields due to the low margins on low cost flights.

But Shringi said Yatra is now in good shape for the year ahead. “From January to March, things started looking better. The silver lining is, it’s focused our attention on hotels and holiday packages.”

Currently, two-thirds of revenues come from flights and Shringi wants to bring up the hotel/holiday package component to 45-50% of revenues in a couple of years.

Yatra is not alone of course in this new focus on non-air. MakeMyTrip, whose net revenues declined 5.5% and losses mounted to $2.6 million in the quarter ended in December, has also stated its intention to move into hotels and chief executive officer and founder Deep Kalra said he expects nearly 50% of its revenue from hotel business over next two years. (See article)

It recently changed its brand tag line from “Memories Unlimited” two years ago to “Hotels Unlimited”.

Said Kalra in this interview, “What was happening in air ticketing business was not one off. It was a trend and we realised it will be tougher and tougher to make money in air ticketing. When we did our IPO three years ago about 85% of our revenue came from air ticketing. Now it is 68% and by next two years we will have a revenue share of 50:50. It is a tougher business to begin with but is better in the long run as the margins are high and number of suppliers are  more.”

According to the article, 31% of MMT’s revenue come from packages and hotel business and a small fraction comes from car rentals, bus and train bookings.

“I guess it’s taken a crisis to get us to rethink our business,” said Shringi.

Building up a hotel play has different challenges though. India’s hotel market is very fragmented, dominated by lots of small independents as opposed to the big chains. There’s also a higher need for voice support and call centres. “It’s more of a hybrid model,” said Shringi.

Given the competition and challenges, he said it’s even more imperative thus to build a strong brand. Yatra launched a television campaign featuring actor Salman Khan as Mr Yatra and the sequel, launched last November, focused on leisure holidays and showcased the best deals available on the site.

“The market is still growing, it’s not saturated yet. We need to build trust in the market,” said Shringi.

This year though, Yatra will spend more of its budget on conversion and optimization and will try to increase hotel conversion rates from 2-3% to 4-5%. “That’d be a good benchmark to go after.”

There was a time too when there was talk that Yatra would also go the IPO route as MakeMyTrip did but now Shringi said the market conditions are not conducive and “perhaps MMT went out too early”.

“It’s better to remain private and build the business out.”