​Online travel platform MakeMyTrip Ltd, which listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange in August 2010, is now evaluating a potential listing of its Indian entity on the domestic bourses after completing an internal restructuring.
An India listing could provide an additional avenue to access capital, including from domestic institutional and retail investors, as well as enable the company to provide India‑listed equity as potential consideration for growth initiatives, MakeMyTrip said in a statement.
The company, which has been acquisitive in the last couple of years, also said that its locally traded shares can be further used as consideration (instead of cash) to acquire and partner with Indian companies.
“(MakeMyTrip) believes that an India listing can be a catalyst to further boost the MakeMyTrip brand in its core market, strengthen its leadership in India and support longer-term growth,” it said.
The travel company’s consideration of an India listing comes only a few months after it raised $3.1 billion last year through an offering of ordinary shares and convertible notes and bought back part of the stake held by its largest investor, Shanghai-headquartered Trip.com Group Ltd, reducing the Chinese firm’s stake to about 20% from 45%.
Incidentally, MakeMyTrip’s shares have lost more than half their value in the last one year. The company currently commands a market capitalization of about $4.35 billion.
The Gurugram-based travel company also said it has completed its internal restructuring to combine its key brands operating in India under a single entity, with the merger of RedBus India Pvt Ltd into MakeMyTrip (India) Pvt Ltd.
In addition, it acquired a majority stake in Flamingo Transworld, a regional group holiday packages business based in India. Further, it participated in digital visa processing platform Atlys’s Series C round.
“(The investment) will allow travellers to benefit from a streamlined visa application process, as well as create an opportunity for MakeMyTrip to cross-sell its travel offerings to Atlys's customer base of outbound travellers,” the company said. “We believe that this will help further expand our market share and consolidate our position in the outbound travel market by creating a differentiated, vertically integrated customer experience.”
MakeMyTrip competes with Mumbai-listed peers EaseMyTrip and Yatra.com among others. It runs multiple travel platforms including MakeMyTrip, Goibibo and redBus, allowing customers to research, plan and book a wide range of travel services and products in India and overseas.​
