Indians spend a whopping Rs. 7 lakh crores annually on their travel needs and the second largest travel portal of India, EaseMyTrip, helps them book flight tickets at a competitive price for their desired destinations. In wake of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s mission “Vocal for Local”, this purely Indian business has now found tremendous support from leading celebrity voices from the world of films, TV and sports, pushing the call to go local even more strongly.


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Starting In A Garage


Two brothers, Nishant and Rikant Pitti, started EaseMyTrip in 2008 with just Rs 1 lakh in their pocket. The business grew over time and soon, EaseMyTrip had outran all other online booking apps and become the second-largest travel portal of the country with the annual turnover of Rs. 4,000 crores. Despite not enjoying any foreign investment, EaseMyTrip, which started its journey in a garage in New Delhi, has beaten all other online booking portals to grab the business in countries like the UK, Thailand,


UAE, Maldives and Singapore. After setting up offices in India, in Noida, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai, EaseMyTrip is now going to open business in the US and Europe too. Therefore, if you support it, you would help in making this Indian company a global giant, thanks to your growing purchasing power.


Celebrity Support Pours In


Celebs right from Kangana Ranaut to Anupam Kher, Ajay Devgn to Emraan Hashmi, Gautam Gambhir to Sanjeeda have loaded videos on their social media accounts, asking public to support this 100% Indian travel portal. The famous voices have talked about the history of EaseMyTrip, how this app is working without any foreign investment or funding, and how convenient they’ve made travel booking for customers.


In her video, Kangana says, “Most of the money that Indians spend on their travel needs every year through travel portals doesn’t stay in India. As against this, the second largest, 100% Indian portal, EaseMyTrip has reasonable charges in comparison to other travel companies because they don’t charge convenience fees…Go ahead and download EaseMyTrip app and go Vocal for Local. Jai Hind.” This clarion call to support this native travel site has found echo in a number of other celebrity voices. Ajay Devgn speaks of their ‘fair pricing practice’ and asks the public to decide on its own whether it wanted to buy from foreign-funded travel portals or support a wholly local initiative. In his characteristic style, Anupam Kher said in his video, “Let us keep our travel business of Rs. 7 lakh crores in India and make an Indian company the top travel company of India.”


With similar voices being raised for EaseMyTrip, the focus has now shifted to this purely Indian app, which is not only easy on your pocket because of zero transaction or convenience fee charges, but also allows the customers to book tickets even with their WhatsApp account.


Going, Going, Gone!


Today, EaseMyTrip is a leading name on the travel landscape, marked by a customer-base that is about 9-million strong and counting. Their strong B2B network is represented by more than 52,000 registered travel agent partners and 10,477 satisfied corporate customers. Speaking about their beginning, Company’s Executive Director and CTO, Rinkant, says, “We observed that around 17% of total international visitors travel for the first time. So we started identifying all their pain points. One of the key findings was that when first time abroad, they are most anxious as soon as they land at an international airport since they heavily depend on the driver for pick-up and drop at their hotel. And it turned out that these drivers were usually late around 23% of the time, causing anxiety.”


Paying attention to such small details is what has earned EaseMyTrip its current position in the travel sector bookings as well as such vociferous support from celebrities. No doubt that this ‘Swadeshi’ travel company is fulfilling PM Modi’s dream of becoming “Aatmanirbhar” in its segment.


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