After selling tickets worth Rs 300 cr in 10 days, EaseMyTrip says 'pent-up demand yet to kick in'

Online travel company EasyMyTrip on Wednesday said that the travel and tourism industry is not seeing a slowdown despite pinching inflation, adding that it has sold tickets worth Rs 300 crore in the first ten days of August as part of its annual festive season sale.

"We actually recently concluded our annual sale... We did the sales from August 1 till August 10. And in just those 10 days, we were able to do total business of Rs 300 crore. So the overall sale went extremely well and was extremely well received by the customers," said Prashant Pitti, Co-founder, EasyMyTrip, in an interview with CNBC-TV18.

Last month, the company reported a strong set of numbers for the first quarter with Profit After Tax seeing a growth of 125 percent to Rs 33 crore against Rs 14.9 crore during the same period last year.

Gross Booking Revenue (GBR) rose 366 percent to Rs 1,663 crore from Rs 356 crore year-on-year and the adjusted revenue came in at Rs 132 crore, up 169 percent YoY from Rs 49 crore.

However, Pitti said the pent-up demand was yet to fully kick in and believes the momentum will continue with the onset of the festive season despite inflation.

"We are still seeing the pent-up demand to kick in even though the fears might have gone a little bit higher because of the inflation, the demand has not stopped. So, we believe that this trend is probably going to continue and now the festival season is coming so the demand is only going to pick from here," he said.

According to Pitti, the discount will stabilise going ahead from the current levels of annual sales. However, overall, the company continues to remain bullish.

"If you just do the annualised run rate, last year our total GMV was somewhere around Rs 3,500 crore, for the last quarter itself it was around Rs 1,700 crore. So, if you just do the annualised version of that, we are looking forward to touch somewhere around Rs 6,500 crore of GMV for this year," said Pitti.

The company expects to see an upside in the international ticketing in the next few quarters as visa processes pick up pace.

The travel firm's online and offline market share is over 10 percent with 95 percent of the business coming from air ticketing.