E66: Prashant Pitti (Co-founder & Director, EaseMyTrip)

Prashant Pitti is the Co-founder and Director at EaseMyTrip, India’s second largest travel and hospitality company which provides hotel bookings, air tickets, holiday packages, bus bookings, and white-label services. In September 2021, it became a unicorn after its market capitalization crossed $1 billion.

Prashant Pitti is responsible for marketing, branding, investor relations, hotel, bus and media management at EaseMyTrip. He is graduate from IIT Madras and has approximately 16 years of experience in the travel, tourism, banking and social applications. He has also previously worked with HSBC and Capital One in the United States.

In this episode, we will cover:

1. Learning from running a travel and hospitality company during the pandemic (5:50)

2. How did EaseMyTrip maintain lean cost structure and profitability during the pandemic (8:50)

3. Advantages of not raising VC money (13:13)

4. Rationale behind deciding to bootstrap and not raise venture capital (15:55)

5. Why did EaseMyTrip pivot from B2B to B2C (21:40)

6. How does EaseMyTrip maintain its operational efficiencies over various marco-economic ups-and-downs (28:30)

7. Perks of staying under the radar (31:20)

8. The IPO journey (40:43)

9. Timing behind going public during the pandemic (48:45)

10. Building generational business – vision and mission (1:06:12)