Pandemic year a litmus test for all travel companies, says Easemytrip's Prashant Pitti

Easy Trip Planners posted their first quarterly earnings since their listing. A jump in the revenue and a big cut in expenses led to a massive surge in the EBITDA this quarter. Prashant Pitti, Co-Founder and Director, Easemytrip.Com, discussed the earnings and outlook.

The pandemic year was a litmus test for all travel companies, he said.

“The overall booking did go down but we were able to keep our total income on the higher side for this particular quarter, and also keep our cost quite lower as compared to the quarter before. We have been doing this very sustainably for the entire lockdown period,” he shared.

The company doesn’t charge any convenience fees. “We always give our customers an option not to pay convenience fees and this portion comes at the last page when you are about to make the payment. It is not a small amount, it is usually a multiplier of a passenger, it could be between Rs 250 and Rs 300 per passenger. That is the amount which we forego and even after doing that, our company has remained profitable all this while,” he explained.

Q4FY21 witnessed a v-shaped recovery. “In Q1 and Q2, there were hardly any bookings, however, we have bounced back very well in Q3 and Q4. We did 90 percent of the business of what we did in Q4 of FY20,” he stated.