EaseMyTrip is one of India’s leading online travel booking platforms, offering end-to-end travel solutions including flight tickets, hotels, buses, trains, holiday packages, and corporate travel services. Known for its zero-commission model, the company has gained significant market share by prioritizing customer experience and profitability over deep discounting.
In this article, we will discuss the summary of the management commentary from the Q3 FY25 earnings conference call held on February 14, 2025.
EaseMyTrip Financial Highlights (INR Crores)
| Metric | Q3 FY2025 | QoQ Growth | 9M FY2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gross Booking Revenue (GBR) | 2,149 | 7% | 6,499 |
| EBITDA | 51 | 20.7% | 144 |
| EBITDA Margin (%) | 33.2% | ↑ from Q2 | 31.3% |
| PAT (Profit After Tax) | 34 | 30% | 92 |
| PAT Margin (%) | 22.1% | ↑ from Q2 | 20.6% |
Segment-Wise Performance
| Segment | Q3 FY2025 Metrics | Growth (YoY) | Contribution to GBR |
|---|---|---|---|
| Air Ticketing | Core revenue driver | Muted (~7%) | 86% |
| Hotels | 2.5 lakh nights booked | 172% | 11.1% |
| Trains/Buses/Other | 3.6 lakh bookings | 31.9% | 2% |
| Dubai Operations | GBR: INR 170 crores | 227% | Part of international |
Key Highlights of the Financials
- In Q3 FY2025, gross booking revenue reached INR 2,149 crores.
- PAT for the quarter stood at INR 34 crores, growing quarter-on-quarter at 30% with a margin of 22.1%.
- This quarter, total nights booked stood at 2.5 lakhs, reflecting a significant 172% year-on-year growth and contributing 11.1% to the gross booking revenue.
- Bookings in the train, buses and the other category grew by 31.9% year-on-year to 3.6 lakh contributing 2% to GBR.
- Our Dubai operations have also shown remarkable progress, showing a year-on-year growth of 227% and the gross booking revenue stood at INR 170 crores in Q3 FY2025.
Marketing & Partnerships
The company secured the title sponsorship for the Big Cricket League, engaging with cricket enthusiasts through exclusive travel benefits and ticket giveaways. The tournament held in December 2024 recorded a live viewership of 16.1 million across television and digital platforms. Additionally, the event achieved a global reach of 200 million through various digital, print and social media channels.
Additionally, the company has partnered with the Kho Kho Federation of India to launch the inaugural Kho Kho World Cup in January 2025 in New Delhi, further reinforcing our commitment to supporting indigenous sports.
The company will sponsor Season 2 of the World Championship of Legends T20 League which runs from July 18 to August 2, 2025, featuring marquee matches, including India versus Pakistan. With the tournament growing appeal and an estimate audience of 280 million to 325 million, WCL Season 2 presents a unique opportunity to connect with cricket enthusiasts across key markets.
Offline Expansion
The company has accelerated the rollout of our franchisee model, opening new stores in Raipur, Srikalahasti, Bangalore, Jabalpur, Bhubaneswar and Hyderabad.
New Mumbai office has been inaugurated to enhance corporate and my travel solutions.
Awards
The company received the prestigious GoGlobal accreditation from IATA.
Sustainability & Digital Initiatives
The company has partnered with BNZ Green to introduce real-time carbon footprint tracking and a blockchain-based carbon offset program. This allows travelers to purchase carbon credits and receive verified certificates, promoting sustainable travel choices.
The strategic partnership with OLX India has expanded company’s digital footprint, integrating its dedicated travel booking section within their platform, providing seamless access to flights, hotels and holiday packages for its 35 million plus monthly users.
As a part of company’s calibration with CARS24, customers booking via EaseMyTrip had the opportunity to win a pre-owned car, while CARS24 users received travel vouchers, and the top spender won a Goa trip.
New Ventures
The company’s expansion into specialized travel services, it has entered the study tourism sector with the acquisition of Planet Education Australia.
Question and Answer Session Highlights
Given what we’ve seen in your numbers, Q3 typically is a strong quarter for travel. And if I look at your GBR numbers across categories, it appears we may have grown slower compared to competition, both larger competition as well as similar size or smaller competition. It would be great to get your inputs as to what is — why is that happening?
If you compare quarter-on-quarter, our GBR — in fact year-on-year as well our GBR too. We are good with discount. Actually, we degrew our discount quarter-on-quarter from 3.8% to 3%.
at EaseMyTrip, we are heavily focused on the quarter number. we are very, very caution able in growing ourselves while remaining profitable.
We took the call of reducing our discounts for this particular quarter and yet there was an increase in GBR, which we see as a positive sign. In terms of private players, I see that there are few private players as well, which are borrowing money.
And we have seen in the past as well that none of these efforts lead to a long-term growth and long-term sustainable business practices which is why we are also cautioning very carefully in terms of managing profitability and managing growth.
there was once again some news flow around promoter/company interest in — related to GoAir, it would be great to get clarity on that front?
Yes, we are trying to see if basically we can revive GoAir again. There is a lot of value in GoAir. And however, this is a very, very private conservation. If that happens, it will basically lead to some benefit of EaseMyTrip, but this is not with respect to EaseMyTrip. It’s a decision of an individual, at the individual capacity.
So, from the results, we can see that since the last four, five quarters, GBR is not growing and we are also not able to grow any revenue contribution. Only the thing positive is that contribution from the hotel business is growing. So how do we see the future of the company maybe in the next year or how you’ll see last year.
See, basically, we are trying our level best to grow the company. As you rightly put, the hotel business is growing and also our Middle East business is growing. Our efforts on India air market might be subdued. And the reason is that there is a lot of competition from the private players who are in the eye of growing their airline business at the cost of losing money. And because of which there is a muted growth.
We did grow about 7% in this particular quarter. But again, we also agree that growth would have been much better had we increased our discount. From last quarter, we reduced from 3.8% to 3%. Had we increased our — or had we kept our discount to 3.8%, we would have seen at least 15% to 20% increase in our GBR. But again, as a company which has been bootstrapped ever since.
Only, last year ago, we raised some capital. We really, really care about profitability. And for that matter, we understand that it’s a long-term game.
we are unnecessarily diluting the equity by giving various bonus. And so, I don’t think it’s very necessary. Could you please share what is the reason behind this dilution — equity dilution, giving unnecessary bonus issues?
So that was done a quarter before. It was not done in the last quarter.
We are trying our best to create value for ourselves and for our shareholders by the virtue of holding more than 50% of the company. And the public commitment is made that for this particular year, we will not be selling any shares. So, we would abide by that.
The Dubai office has shown a remarkable increase in GBR. Like what factors contributed to this growth? And how sustainable is it?
So Middle East is a very unique business opportunity. here is a very strong belief in the company that Middle East will continue to grow for our organization. Our flight and our hotel, both businesses are growing out of Middle East. And we believe that this growth is very sustainable.
You would also see that in Middle East, we would find ourselves not growing as much for a couple of quarters and then again shooting up and growing. If you see our last quarter’s performance, we do plateau for some quarters and then we grow again, then we are flat for some quarters. And the rationale behind it is that with every growth, there is an inefficiency which gets created.
And then we take one quarter to basically remove those inefficiencies, become efficient again and then press the paddle of growth again. So, this is usual way of our working. And hence, you would see growth spurt from Middle East for every now then and quarters. And we believe that we have not even achieved 5% of what we could basically bring out of Middle East.