DESIGNING FOR GROWTH

I. Project Overview:

Org. Name : Make My Trip India Pvt. Ltd.

Start Date : 1st September, 2016
End Date : 31st March, 2019

II. Context: The merger

Our project for OD through managing and leading change started with the merger of two giants
of Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) in India – MakeMyTrip (MMT) and Goibibo (GI).

MakeMyTrip is the leading OTA in India and was founded in 2000 by Deep Kalra. It was
launched in US market in the year 2000 to cater to the overseas Indian community for their US
to India travel needs. In September 2005, the India operations started - offering online flight
tickets to Indian travelers.

Ashish Kashyap founded Ibibo Group in January 2007. It is one of India's largest hotels
aggregation and leading air aggregator. Goibibo's core value differentiation is delivery of the
fastest and the most trusted and reliable user experiences. Goibibo had acquired redBus in June
2013. redBus is India's most popular online bus ticketing platform, both on mobile and on
desktop.

Market scenario and macro environment

The $1.8-billion merger deal saw the then newly merged travel giant grab more than 60% of
the overall online travel market in India.

The merger, supported by multiple market scenario and macro factors was set for success. The
highlights of these factors are:
 Tourism generated 9.2% of India’s GDP in 2018.
 We expect the he Indian travel to grow at 11-11.5% to $48 billion by 2020.
 India expects to have 840 million internet users with more than 100 million users
transacting online by 2025.
 The government policies are also in favor of the travel industry with operational airports
in the country increasing from 75 to 150, under regional connectivity scheme (RCS).
 The ‘Tourist Visa on Arrival (TVOA) scheme’ now includes 161 countries.

III. Opportunity &/or problem: What was at stake?

Despite the market scenarios, there was one big challenge facing MakeMyTrip. According to
collated research and a recent Harvard Business Review report, the failure rate for mergers and
acquisitions sits between 70 percent and 90 percent. Even during the MMT & GI merger, there
were concerns around the integration of human resources and technology, along with ensuring
greater cost benefits.

The merger posed high stakes for the organization. On the business front, it brought top travel
brands MakeMyTrip, Goibibo, redBus, Rightstay & Ryde together. This was an opportunity to
lead all segments in online travel in India by leveraging every entity’s individual strength.
On the customer perspective, the organization became more equipped to launch innovative
products by driving innovation for seamless customer experience.

On the people perspective, the coming together of two diverse cultures and integration of such
large teams was an unexplored area.

On the financial perspective, the merger resulted in a combined valuation $3.5 billion for the
organization. With an estimated total market opportunity of $34.3 billion, the merger posed a
unique opportunity in front of us.

Addressing the elephant in the room

While it was an exciting journey, it was full of changing dynamics, unique problems and a need
to provide quick and customized solutions.

As the HR team, we tried to bring an overall uniformity in the system, but this was challenging
due to multiple variables at play. At some places, we were able to provide robust solutions,
while at some places we were still building interventions to take the organization forward.

The culture of the two organizations were starkly different. MakeMytrip was a 16-year-old
start-up moving towards formal structures with a belief that it is important to do things right in
the first time. Ibibo on the other hand, was a 6 year old org., beginning to develop structures
and with a belief that it is important to do rather than doing it in a perfectly.

The challenges were not just limited to the culture, it extended to managing perceptions
pertaining to business, structures, roles and individual employee attributes; challenges in
addressing role related insecurities and lack of clarity about the valued talent parameters for
each entity. We addressed these challenges in the most effective way while ensuring business
continuity by taking measures to ensure no loss to business from vendor or customer side.

IV. OD Project: Interventions by the HR team

1. Culture integration

Understanding the culture

To identify the culture interventions we used the OCAI model. The model helped us gain
insight about the dominant culture of organization and an indication of change-readiness by
assessing the difference between current and preferred culture.

The OCAI is a validated tool for assessing current and preferred organizational culture,
developed by professors Robert Quinn and Kim Cameron of the University of Michigan, based
on the Competing Values Framework.

Basis the results, we defined our way forward.

Our Core Values

One of the most critical interventions was redefining our core values. From close to 21 values
of all 3 entities – MMT, GI and redBus we defined 6 core values which defines each go-
Trippers.

We held multiple focused group discussions, structured, unstructured interviews, and

numerous meetings to identify our core values. Post identifying the core values, we focused all
our energies on ensuring that every go-tripper identifies these values with themselves and
imbibes them in their everyday actions.

The new set of core values are:

2. Force-one, task forces & integration projects

On completion of the merger on paper in Jan 2017, we formed a 250-member task force to
action the merger. The task force comprised of top performers and seniors of the both the
organization. They were responsible for merging the areas of work seamlessly and effectively.
The management and task force together identified projects to create cohesive framework and
plan merger related projects by identifying the right people to work on those projects.

Apart from the task force, we had Track SPOCs. They were accountable for getting work done
in the assigned timelines. They were responsible for coordination, recording meetings &
flagging issues.

There was a core PMO to follow on the progress of the task forces and resolve for escalations
arising from the task force level. The final Steering committee was the decision making body.

Review of each projects happened fortnightly to ensure timely completion. Throughout the
process, clear communication was the only constant in this mega process of change.

3. Business enabling structures

We created new business structures by merging teams who were doing similar profiles in
different entities to leverage strengths and help business by leveraging human potential &
exploring new territories.

Within the first 3 months, the hotel supply team and the HR teams came together. The supply
team’s merger has resulted in a 43% increase in OTA market share and 108% increase in hotel
room nights. Within 1.5 years, Finance, Legal, Marketing, Revenue, User Experience, Air &
Ground Supply and Customer Experience teams came together. The overall market
capitalization increased more than 300% from <$1 billion to approx. $4 billion.

Coming together of line of businesses gave us a better talent pool and human capital, which
led to innovations like AI chat-bots, new product lines of Experiences, Visa, etc.

4. Employee process integration

Policies
We reformed the org. policies and mapped the best in market. We ensured that neither of the
teams felt that they were missing their old organization as we took the best of both worlds to
make one great org.
We reformed our leave policy and introduced the open leave policy with no capping on the
number of leaves an employee can take. All employees have the flexibility to choose when and
how many leaves they wish to take, as per their individual requirement. All they need to do is
discuss the requirement with their managers.
We offer work place flexibility. We make ongoing efforts to enhance the working environment.
Having the freedom to work on one’s own terms is the cornerstone of breakthrough
innovations.
We offer long-term incentive plans with the purpose of rewarding performance and
encouraging contribution towards the company’s growth in terms of stock options.
We provide medical insurance for self and family. Employee wellbeing is our priority and we
offer free medical coverage for self, spouse and children. Either parents or parent-in laws are
covered under the policy.
We offer on the go wellness app for employee well being.
We are all globetrotters and we encourage our employees to make travel memories with
discounted holidays for family & friends

Performance and continuous feedback

We offer personalized performance management for different teams depending on their nature
of work. Sales driven functions like supply have monthly evaluations, whereas Tech and
Product functions have quarterly evaluations.
Agile PMS provides opportunities to pick up projects to solve organization problems. We
support this process with continuous feedback for all employees. This helps with real time
feedback and in identifying coaching/mentoring interventions.
Co-location
We consolidated our real estate across locations (Gurgaon and Bangalore) and moved 2200+
employees into the same office. We celebrate all events across locations through common
engagement practices and Town Hall meets.

Corporate Social Responsibility

We create a sense of pride and belongingness in the new entity through ways of CSR where.
Our aim is to invest resources & create awareness to support sustainable & responsible tourism
in India.
We took a big leap with crowd sourcing of funds through ‘Be the change’ initiative through
customer funnel through which we have collected approx. 7 CR.
We have planted a million trees in Udaipur & Rajsamand districts of Rajasthan through. Even,
all offices are free of single use plastic

Diversity
Diversity fosters innovation. It encourages different perspectives and ideas that foster cutting-
edge products and solutions. When we have employees of diverse backgrounds, perspectives,
and experiences, we can tap into the many talents they bring to the workplace.
To encourage diversity we have various platforms like the Holiday Experts, which is a unique,
flexible channel for stay-at-home women. As of 2019, we have about 1000 holiday experts
situated all over the country, managed by a team of 60 in-house employees of the holiday’s
team. Despite the remote nature of the job, we have managed to integrate this channel
effectively, sustained it and grown it.
We also have a BackToFuture program especially designed for talented women who have taken
a break from their careers and are now ready to return. Through this initiative, we aim to
provide opportunities for talented women to reboot their careers in full force!
BackToFuture features structured learning experiences aimed at helping women rediscover
their potential, with structured on-boarding and focused mentoring—all key elements to help
each one of them get up-to-speed at work.
For us diversity does not means only gender diversity. We also have Certified Travel
Associates. This provides work from home opportunity for retirees, students and small business
owners. Through the CTA channel, we are working on getting travelers from smaller cities
online.

5. Leveraging Technology

We have automated all our HR processes. Be it performance management, hiring, exits, data
management, employee engagement etc. we have everything online to ensure minimum TAT
and high efficiency to enable business in the best possible way possible.
We use a chat-bot for employee engagement which gives us live feed of our employees pulse,
their engagement levels and helps us define way forward based on data.
We put special emphasis on communications. We have social media platforms specially for
internal communication, a special radio channel that plays in our offices and newsletters which
keeps everyone updated about developments in each team.

6. Right talent landscape

One of the biggest challenges following merger was loss of talent. This led to a need for
identifying and ring fencing of critical talent.

We identified 500+ key people who were critical to business. We divided them into categories
of Bunker, Super Critical, Critical and Rising stars. We provided them with a growth paths and
elevated opportunities to develop themselves.

We focused on tech ramp ups to expand business and conducted role clarity discussions for
100% employees. As a result, per person productivity grew from 1.23 CR to 1.36 CR in 2018.

7. Learning and development

We provide our employees with multiple avenues to enhance their learnings. We have multiple
academies, which help them be future leaders.

1. Young Leaders Academy – a 90 day’s journey for our AM & DM’s to prepare them for
their growth to mid-management roles
2. CXOs Academy - a 180 day’s journey for our mid-management for their movement to
senior leadership roles
3. CEO’s Academy – a 180 day’s journey for senior management to become business
leaders

We organize multiple in-house and built to context trainings module for developing functional
and behavioral skills.
We also have an online learning platform which has a vast array of programs available from
all fields – technical and non-technical to enhance employees skills at their pace. This platform
offers trainings from known providers like Udemy, Rosetta, Coursera, etc.

V. Post project Evaluation: The landscape today

MakeMyTrip has come a long way. From product offering for US based Indians clients whose
need was to travel to India, we have come a long way. We are a one-stop shop for all travel
related requirements providing hotels, experiences, visa, rail, cab, bus, just everything!
Market leadership

From $448 million market share in 2017, we grew 51% $675 million in 2018. In the domestic
industry, we have 57% market share in hotels, 67% in flights and 73% in bus. In the
international scenario, we have 30% market share in hotels and 55% in flights.
We have been instrumental in bringing more consumers to the online travel world with
currently, 55% booking for flights, 45% buses and 20% hotels being booked online.
Until date, we have 42 million transacted customers. With all these achievements, we have a
simple vision - To make travel simple and fun for all, by leveraging technology & customer
insights.
Innovative products
In the last 2 years, we have launched 3 new lines of business –
1. Mybiz – for addressing corporate travel requirements
2. Experiences – for providing experience and activities while travelling
3. Visa – to make the visa process online and simple – through just a few clicks and
uploads
This just shows how the structure, environment and culture if the team works on motivating
the employee on delivering more than expected!

Awards

We have bagged multiple awards in the last few years – from technology, innovation, to being
best place to work for women, we have left our mark everywhere.
2017
-Best creative advertising and Single Ad / Campaign - E4M Prime Time Awards 2016
-Best Travel and Tourism brand - Social Samosa Social Media Awards
-Best ecommerce solution - Express IT Awards
-Best Use of Integrated Marketing Campaign category - India Marketing Awards
-Best Travel and Holidays (Gold) - Business world Golden Cart Awards
-Favourite travel app - Condé Nast Traveller India
-Favourite online tour agent - Condé Nast Traveller India
-WORKING MOTHER & AVTAR Top 100 Best Companies for Women In India, 2017
-'Equal Opportunity Employer’ for our work with people with special abilities
-Recognition of Effective and Impactful Advertising (Silver) - EFFIES

2018
-Best E - commerce solution provider - Express IT Award
-Gold at Exchange4Media PrimeTime Awards 2018
-Excellence in Online booking sites - SATTE
-Integrated Marketing Initiative - Brand Equity Marketing Awards
-Buzziest Brand Award for E-commerce Solution - Wion
-Jury Award for Best Travel Partner - Zee Business Travel Awards
-OTA of the year - Times Travel Awards 2018

2019
-Best Online Travel Agency in the B2C category – FICCI Tourism Awards

VI. Learnings & implications

Being one of the only 10% companies that see a successful merger, we are happy to end this
report by sharing our learnings from our experience:
 Don’t allow cynicism to breed for long – Address it
 Not only be fair but also be seen to be fair
 High speed of execution keeps everyone engaged
 Celebrate small wins and communicate effectively
 Don’t over engineer anything - it creates confusion

For us, it was about perseverance. To persevere means to continue working hard even after
experiencing difficulty or failure, and we did. In this journey, It was gratifying to see how all
teams collaborated. A deep belief in solving the customer’s issues, gaining their confidence
and winning their loyalty, helped bring everyone together. As long as we keep the customer in
focus, we believe we will keep moving forward!

Thank you!
Author 1
Name : Nikita Zutshi
Designations : Director-HR
Date : 12th Nov’19

Author 2
Name : Vantika Sinha
Designations : Deputy Manager-HR
Date : 12th Nov’19