MakeMyTrip's Dynamic Packaging Model in Travel

Industry and Competitive Context

India's online travel market is large, fragmented at the edges, and consolidated at the center. Independent market-sizing research estimates the online travel segment was worth approximately USD 15.63 billion in 2023, with online travel agencies (OTAs) accounting for the largest booking-type share of that market. Within this market, MakeMyTrip Limited (NASDAQ: MMYT) is the dominant player. According to Skift Research's company profile, cited by trade publication Skift, MakeMyTrip is described as India's leading OTA, with 2024 marked by double-digit revenue growth, rapid margin expansion, and a roughly 150% rise in its share price, making it one of the best-performing travel stocks globally that year.

The competitive set includes Yatra Online, Cleartrip, EaseMyTrip, ixigo, and global entrants such as Booking.com a field independent market research firm Mordor Intelligence lists as MakeMyTrip, Yatra Online, EaseMyTrip, Cleartrip, and ixigo as the major companies operating in the India online travel market, which was estimated at roughly USD 25.38 billion in 2026. Category leadership varies by vertical. In bus ticketing, MakeMyTrip's redBus subsidiary is widely reported as the largest player; a third-party market analysis states redBus held roughly three-quarters share of the segment as of 2023, with ixigo's AbhiBus in second place. In rail booking, government-run IRCTC and private player ixigo hold larger positions than MakeMyTrip, a gap that public commentary flags as a structural weak point for the company. This uneven competitive position dominant in flights and hotels, contested in rail is relevant context for why the Hotels and Packages segment (where MakeMyTrip's dynamic bundling capability lives) is central to its strategy: it is the vertical where bundling multiple inventory types into one transaction creates the most defensible differentiation.

Brand Situation Prior to the Current Model

MakeMyTrip was founded in 2000 by Deep Kalra and listed on Nasdaq in 2010, according to public financial-press reporting on its 2016 merger transaction. For over a decade the company operated primarily as an online travel agent selling flights, hotels, and pre-built holiday packages under a single brand.

The structural turning point was the 2016–2017 merger with the ibibo Group. On October 18, 2016, Naspers Ltd. agreed to combine its Indian travel unit Ibibo with MakeMyTrip; Naspers, through a holding company minority owned by Tencent, agreed to sell Ibibo to MakeMyTrip in exchange for new shares, and Naspers and Tencent together became the largest shareholders in MakeMyTrip, holding 40 percent. The deal closed on January 31, 2017; per MakeMyTrip's own SEC filing (Form 6-K), the merger created one of the leading travel groups in India, brought together MakeMyTrip, goibibo, redBus, Ryde and Rightstay under one group, and these combined brands had together processed 34.1 million transactions in fiscal year 2016. Deep Kalra remained Group CEO and Executive Chairman, Rajesh Magow continued as CEO of the India business, and ibibo founder Ashish Kashyap joined as Co-founder and President.

This merger is the foundational strategic event that gave MakeMyTrip the multi-brand architecture (MakeMyTrip, Goibibo, redBus) and the combined flight-hotel-bus-rail inventory base necessary to build a dynamic packaging capability at scale. Prior to this consolidation, MakeMyTrip and ibibo's Goibibo were separate, competing supply pools; post-merger, the enlarged group could cross-sell and bundle across a much wider inventory base under one financial reporting structure.

Strategic Objective

MakeMyTrip's public disclosures frame the objective in consistent terms across multiple earnings cycles: growing gross bookings and margin by expanding the "Hotels and Packages" segment relative to lower-margin air ticketing, and by using technology to personalize and price bundled trips more precisely than static package pricing allows. In the company's official description of itself, filed with every earnings release, MakeMyTrip states that its services and products include air ticketing, hotel and alternative accommodations bookings, holiday planning and packaging, rail ticketing, bus ticketing, car hire, and ancillary travel requirements holiday planning and packaging is named as a distinct, core line of business, not a peripheral add-on.

The financial architecture supports this reading. MakeMyTrip's own "Key Performance Indicators" disclosure explains that income from packages, including income on airline tickets sold to customers as part of tours and packages, is accounted for on a "gross" basis because the company controls the services before they are transferred to travelers, meaning revenue from the packages business represents the total amount paid by customers for these travel services, while the cost of procuring the underlying services is classified as service cost. This is a materially different accounting and operating posture than a pure marketplace or metasearch model: by taking principal risk on bundled packages, MakeMyTrip is structurally incentivized to optimize the combination and pricing of components the essence of dynamic packaging rather than simply listing separate inventory.

Campaign Architecture and Execution

Three verifiable pillars make up the execution of MakeMyTrip's bundling and pricing capability.

Pillar one: multi-brand inventory consolidation. The 2017 ibibo merger combined MakeMyTrip's own supply with Goibibo's hotel and air inventory and redBus's bus network, giving the group, per its own filing, a base that had processed 34.1 million transactions in fiscal 2016 alone. This scale is the raw material dynamic packaging draws on: more inventory combinations to price and bundle.

Pillar two: segment-level financial engineering that rewards bundling. MakeMyTrip separates "customer inducement costs" described in filings as customer incentives, customer acquisition costs, and loyalty program costs recorded as a reduction of revenue from core Adjusted Margin reporting. The company's fiscal 2024 fourth-quarter results show these costs were actively and differentially deployed by segment: customer inducement costs in Air Ticketing fell from $36.2 million in Q4 FY23 to $28.6 million in Q4 FY24, while customer inducement costs in Hotels and Packages rose from $22.1 million to $31.5 million over the same period. This asymmetric reallocation reducing discount intensity in the lower-margin, more commoditized air segment while increasing it in the segment where bundled packages sit is consistent with a deliberate strategy to concentrate promotional and pricing investment in the part of the business where dynamic packaging creates the most differentiated, harder-to-price-compare product.

Pillar three: AI-driven personalization and conversational trip planning. MakeMyTrip has publicly disclosed a sequence of AI product launches aimed at trip discovery and planning, which are the front-end of any dynamic packaging engine. On August 7, 2025, the company announced via an official press release and Business Wire filing the launch of Myra, a GenAI-enabled Trip Planning Assistant built on an agentic AI framework, designed to assist users at every stage of travel planning from discovery to fulfilment and beyond, supporting voice and text interaction and built on a network of specialized AI agents across flights, accommodation, holidays, ground transport, visas, and forex. Group CEO Rajesh Magow stated at the launch that the company's in-house team had developed custom language models layered with planning, scheduling, and verification systems working in sync in real time. Independent industry press (Elets CIO) reported that Myra was positioned to interpret complex, open-ended user intent and deliver real-time, contextually relevant suggestions, building on earlier GenAI-enabled tools such as Fare Lock and Zero Cancellation. In its subsequent October 2024 earnings commentary, reported by trade outlets PhocusWire and Skift, Group CEO Rajesh Magow stated the company's AI assistant had "significant traction among new and non-metro users," indicating segment-differentiated product delivery. A further upgrade, "Myra 2.0," was announced via company press materials in May 2026, extending the assistant to complete conversational bookings including complex, multi-constraint holiday and hotel searches.

Positioning and Consumer Insight

MakeMyTrip's public positioning, evident from its self-description repeated in every SEC filing, is that of a comprehensive, one-stop travel platform rather than a single-category specialist: it aims to provide customers with access to all major domestic full-service and low-cost airlines operating in India and all major airlines operating to and from India, a comprehensive set of domestic accommodation properties in India and a wide selection of properties outside of India, Indian Railways, and all major Indian bus operators. This "one-stop" positioning is the natural consumer-facing expression of a dynamic packaging model: the value proposition is not the lowest price on a single component, but the most complete and personally relevant combination of components.

Group CEO Rajesh Magow has repeatedly tied this positioning to consumer segments in earnings commentary. Commenting on fiscal 2024 fourth-quarter results, he stated that the company's strategy to serve millions of customers and first-time travellers through a comprehensive portfolio of travel and ancillary products with personalised experiences was yielding results. The explicit reference to "first-time travellers" and "personalised experiences" signals that the underlying consumer insight management has articulated publicly is that India's rapidly growing traveler base many booking online for the first time benefits from a platform that assembles a complete, curated trip rather than requiring the consumer to independently research and stitch together flights, hotels, and local transport.

The Myra launch materials extend this insight to language: the official press release noted the assistant would ensure users across India who had previously been unable to book due to discomfort with the English language would now be able to do so, with the beta supporting Hindi and Hinglish alongside English. This indicates a publicly stated consumer insight that language and complexity, not just price, have historically been barriers to booking, and that dynamic, conversational packaging is positioned as a solution to that barrier for non-metro and non-English-first users specifically.

Media and Channel Strategy

MakeMyTrip's own corporate description states its primary distribution channels are its websites www.makemytrip.com, www.goibibo.com, and www.redbus.in and mobile platforms through which travelers research, plan, and book. Beyond this self-description, no verified public information is available on the specific media mix, paid-versus-organic split, or channel-level spend allocation for dynamic packaging products specifically; MakeMyTrip's marketing and sales promotion expense is disclosed only in aggregate at the corporate and segment level (see Section 7), not broken down by channel (television, digital display, search, influencer, etc.) in any public filing reviewed. Skift Research's company profile, as reported by Skift, does note that MakeMyTrip has built a strong presence in Google's organic search results relative to competitors, which independent industry commentary treats as an important, though not officially quantified, channel advantage. This search-visibility point is attributed to Skift Research's analysis rather than to MakeMyTrip itself, and should be read accordingly.

Business and Brand Outcomes

The clearest, most rigorously sourced outcomes come directly from MakeMyTrip's SEC-filed quarterly and annual earnings releases (Form 6-K).

Fiscal Year 2024 (ended March 31, 2024). Group-wide, revenue grew 32.0% year-over-year (35.7% in constant currency) to $782.5 million, gross bookings grew to $7,954.4 million, and the company moved from a net loss of $11.2 million in FY2023 to net profit of $216.7 million in FY2024 (this figure includes a one-time $126.1 million deferred-tax-asset credit and a $30.6 million gain on convertible notes, both disclosed by the company). Within this,Hotels and Packages revenue grew 29.0% (32.5% in constant currency) to $435.5 million for the full year, with Adjusted Margin for the segment up 34.3% (38.4% in constant currency) to $348.9 million, and the number of hotel-room nights booked, including as part of packages, grew 19.2% year-over-year for FY2024.

Quarterly momentum through FY2025. In the first quarter of fiscal 2025, per earnings coverage of the company's own release, MakeMyTrip posted revenue of $254.5 million, up 29.4% year-over-year, with the hotels and packaging business growing 27.5% to almost $147 million and gross bookings for the segment up 22.8% year-over-year; hotel room nights booked as part of packages rose 15.6% to 9.1 million, compared with 7.8 million in the prior-year quarter. In the third quarter of fiscal 2025, Business Standard's reporting on the company's results noted group revenue of $267.4 million (up 24.8% year-over-year) and profit of $27.1 million (up 11.8% year-over-year), with the hotels and packages segment generating $121.9 million, a 24.9% year-over-year increase. By the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, the company's own earnings release stated hotels and packages revenue increased 16.9% (21.4% in constant currency) to $123.3 million, from $105.5 million a year earlier, with Adjusted Margin for the segment up 23.3%.

Stock market response. Independent research cited by Skift describes MakeMyTrip's shares as having surged roughly 150% during 2024, making it one of the best-performing stocks in global travela market outcome, though one that reflects the company's overall financial performance across all segments (air, hotels/packages, bus, and other), not the packaging business in isolation.

Product traction (qualitative, management-stated). As noted in Section 4, management has publicly characterized Myra's early adoption as showing significant traction among new and non-metro users, but the company has not disclosed a specific user count, booking-conversion rate, or revenue contribution attributable to Myra in any public filing reviewed for this case.

Strategic Implications

Three implications follow directly from the verified record above, without extrapolation beyond what is disclosed.

First, MakeMyTrip's dynamic packaging capability is inseparable from its M&A history. The 2017 ibibo merger, not a single product launch, created the multi-brand inventory base (MakeMyTrip, Goibibo, redBus) that made cross-category bundling possible at scale. This suggests that for platform businesses in fragmented, supply-constrained travel markets, inorganic consolidation of inventory can be a more decisive lever for a packaging strategy than technology investment alone though the two are complementary, since the AI layer (Myra) needs the combined inventory to have something meaningful to bundle.

Second, the company's segment-level financial disclosures show a conscious reallocation of promotional spend toward Hotels and Packages relative to Air Ticketing (Section 4), even as the two segments moved in different cost directions. This is a textbook portfolio-management decision: shifting discount intensity toward the higher-margin, more differentiated segment (where bundled, dynamically priced packages are harder for consumers to comparison-shop against a single competitor's flight fare) rather than the increasingly commoditized air-ticketing segment. For an MBA audience, this is a clear, filing-verified example of margin-driven segment prioritization operating beneath a broader "growth" narrative.

Third, MakeMyTrip's AI investment (Myra) is explicitly positioned by management around language and geographic inclusion non-metro, non-English-first users rather than purely around speed or convenience for already-digital, English-fluent metro consumers. This is a strategically significant choice: it suggests MakeMyTrip sees its next growth frontier not in wresting share from competitors in existing digitally mature segments, but in expanding the addressable market of first-time and regional-language travelers, using conversational, personalized dynamic packaging as the mechanism to do so. Whether this bet succeeds in moving the needle on disclosed financial metrics is not yet answerable from public information, since the company has not isolated Myra's contribution in any earnings release to date.

MBA-Style Discussion Questions

1. MakeMyTrip's Hotels and Packages segment is accounted for on a "gross" basis because the company acts as principal, absorbing procurement risk, whereas Air Ticketing is largely agency-based. What are the strategic trade-offs of taking on principal risk in a bundled-package business model, and how does this choice affect the company's incentive to invest in dynamic pricing capability compared to a pure marketplace model?

   
   

2. MakeMyTrip reduced customer inducement costs in Air Ticketing while increasing them in Hotels and Packages between Q4 FY2023 and Q4 FY2024. Using only the segment margin and revenue data disclosed, evaluate whether this reallocation appears to be paying off, and what additional disclosure would be needed to judge it conclusively.

   
   

3. The 2017 merger with ibibo Group is presented in this case as the structural precondition for MakeMyTrip's dynamic packaging capability. What does this suggest about the relative importance of inventory consolidation versus proprietary technology when a platform business seeks to build a defensible bundling advantage in a fragmented market?

   
   

4. MakeMyTrip has positioned its Myra AI assistant around serving non-metro, non-English-first travelers. If you were advising the company, what would be the key risks and opportunities of prioritizing market expansion (bringing new travelers online) over deeper monetization of its existing metro user base, given the growth figures disclosed in this case?

   
   

5. Publicly available data allows us to see segment-level revenue and margin trends but not the specific algorithmic or technical basis for MakeMyTrip's package pricing. As an analyst, what public proxies (financial, operational, or market-share) would you use to infer the effectiveness of a company's dynamic pricing/packaging engine in the absence of direct algorithmic disclosure and what are the limits of that inference?