MakeMyTrip goes vernacular, to add 4 new languages

Online travel firm MakeMyTrip on Thursday launched its Hindi website and said it will be expanded to cover other regional languages like Gujarati and Tamil by the first half of next year.

Online travel firm MakeMyTrip on Thursday launched its Hindi website and said it will be expanded to cover other regional languages like Gujarati and Tamil by the first half of next year.

The move will benefit over 78 crore people, comprising about 62.7% of India's population, who speak one of these five languages.

'Starting this year, we have seen a lot of traction coming from tier II and III cities on mobile. Also, next year, smartphone sales are expected to exceed English speaking population. These are some factors that prompted us to bring in a Hindi app and we will expand that to other languages as well,' MakeMyTrip.Com Head, Mobile Products, Pranav Bhasin told PTI.

MakeMyTrip currently offers website, mobile site and English app to allow users to search, book and make payment for domestic and international flight tickets, hotels and bus tickets.

'MakeMyTrip travel app has crossed more than four million app downloads across mobile platforms -- Android, iPhone, Windows and Blackberry,' MakeMyTrip.Com Head - Mobile Products Pranav Bhasin told PTI.

Buoyed by strong growth in Internet consumption on mobile devices, the number of people online in India stood at 278 million at the end of October this year. Of this, 159 million are estimated to be mobile Internet users.

For feature-phone users without a data connection, MakeMyTrip has introduced travel solutions available on SMS such as flight search, as well as a SMS-based bus-ticket booking service.

'Mobile is a significant channel of access for customers searching and booking their travel with us. About 24% of bookings are made through mobile phones (app, WAP site and touch site) and 30% of total traffic is on mobile,' Bhasin said.

The focus is on delivering a seamless user-experience across all devices -- mobile, tablet and web and making sure the app works even in low bandwidth networks, he added. Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore contributed 52% of the mobile traffic, while Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Chandigarh accounted for the highest non-metro traffic on MakeMyTrip app.