Ten Years, Many Untold Stories

ixigo just completed 10 years since launch. Here are some stories from our crazy roller coaster journey.

The first story is about dreams.

Two 21 year olds worked in a large French company in possibly the most beautiful place on Earth. It was their first job, they were all charged up about changing the world. While all their peers and friends would leave office by 5, these guys would stay there till 8 because they were curious, and learning just the things their bosses asked them to work on was never enough for them. They loved finding new ways to solve problems, and measured their success by how much they could apply their knowledge to improve the status quo. While all their friends partied every weekend, these two guys would show up at work, tinker around with bleeding edge technology, and learn new stuff on their own. They would read inspirational stories of other tech startups and get inspired. They had issues with the systems and hierarchy at their workplace, but instead of cribbing about it, they decided to dream bigger and to pursue those dreams.

The next story is about hope.

When Rajnish and I started ixigo with other co-founders, we did not even have INR 20 Lakhs of savings between us. Also, both of us had liabilities to pay off. Rajnish’s family was going through some financial difficulties, and I had a part of my MBA loan to pay off. We worked on projects for others to make enough cash to pay our employees. I borrowed money from my parents, my sister, my uncles, our friends to keep going. We were hoping to be able to raise some angel money by the time we launch, but I failed to do that. One of our co-founders left. Rajnish had to even go back to consulting for Amadeus again for 6 months but he kept moonlighting on ixigo. Back here I put in every last penny I had to keep things up and running — I moved to my sister’s apartment to save on rent.

But we kept on going, because the love and support of our users, family and friends gave us the courage to keep going. Our first angel investor was an INSEAD classmate of mine who said — “I don’t understand what you are doing, but I believe in you.” and he wired $100K after one phone call in October 2007. In December 2007, we reached 100,000 users per month and $10,000 monthly revenue within 6 months of launch with zero marketing spend and with zero personal bank balances.

We were approaching angel and seed investors since the time ixigo was in closed beta in Jan 2007, and then even VCs after we launched. I made a count today of how many investors we wrote to, met or discussed on the phone in 2007 and it is over 75. The answer from most of them was either “come back when we have more traction”, or “The market doesn’t look big enough”. I will never forget a meeting in late 2007 with a famous VC in Bangalore who told us categorically — “You will never raise even $100K for this idea.” I couldn’t sleep that night. But when I got out of bed, I said to myself — “I will prove her wrong.” and worked with double vigour the next day. We closed our $500K seed round within 3 months of that meeting.

In “Shawshank Redemption” there is a scene where Andy says to Red — “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” You should never lose hope when you are pursuing your dreams. Hope helps you find an open door even when you feel all are closed. When you have nothing going for you, hope is the only thing that keeps you going.

Then there is the story of sacrifice.

As soon as we announced our seed round, many investors started writing back to us. We got a term-sheet for Series A in end of April 2008, just 2 months after closing our seed round, but the financial crisis hit just as we were closing the round, and the deal was off.

In late 2008, we did an all-hands-meet with the 25 employees we had, and told them that we would run out of money in 2–3 months unless we did something to save the company. One of our engineers, Ayush, stood up and said — “We will work without salaries till the company’s revenues can afford it.” That one line set the whole room on a track for finding the formula to survive. The entire ixigo team went on steep pay cuts for 9 months, we went down to zero — (The only accessory I had in my apartment that year was a mattress on the floor). Most of those people stuck around till our Series A round did happen in 2011 and most of them have made money from their ESOPs.

Between 2007–2011, I don’t remember us getting time to watch TV, to be much with friends or family or to buy anything fancy for ourselves. Because from the outside what looks like an overnight success story usually has immense sacrifice and hard-work underneath.

There have been at least 4 times in our history when we ran out of money — literally down to zero. And when that was happening there was no sure funding in sight either. Most companies would have shut down in the face of such situation, but in each of these situations, founders invested back in the company or went to basic survival salaries, investors helped with some bridge money, many ixigems took deep salary cuts for several months, landlords went easy on rent, and each and every time our next round closed just in time for things to be OK. Most importantly, we managed to keep the morale of the rest of the team high and shipped some of the most innovative products in the world around the same time such shit was happening.

The next story is about caring.

From day 1, we cared immensely for our users. We read every single feedback that came in from users. We resolved every issue reported promptly, and we made sure they understood that we care. We also cared immensely for the product user experience, and were anal about the team having an eye for detail that did not tolerate any mediocrity on the product.

We cared deeply for our team. We listened to their problems, admitted our own shortcomings and mistakes, and tried to give people the most rewarding, flexible, fun and creative environment to work in. Because if you care for the people around you, they will care for you and your cause. We realize that as we grow, we may not be able to give as much facetime to folks as we used to, but we want everyone to feel cared for and everyone to be dealt with like one human deals with another; we still make more exceptions than rules every month, because we trust the people more than the process.

We have been immensely lucky to have the most awesome team. Some of the best products we have today and the best marketing we have done have all been on ideas that came from the team, not from us directly. All we did was to support and nurture those ideas. When we look at all the folks on our team who have stayed with us for over 4 years, some for even as much as 9 years, we feel we must have done something right to deserve that. It’s hard to ever pay back that sort of loyalty (except maybe with big ESOPs).

The final story is about purpose.

During our journey, we had some offers to buy us. The only reason we didn’t sell is that we believed that we are out to achieve a larger purpose — to change the way people travel, and we believed in our own capability to build something bigger each time. We also believed that it would not be in the best interest of our users, our team and our company to do it. Because we are meant to make something that impacts the lives of not just millions but hundreds of millions of travelers every day and we have it in us to be the most user-centric company in the travel space in India.

We have also made many mistakes and wrong decisions. Decisions are wrong only in hindsight, and if you don’t realize the small failures you encounter everyday, you can never improve yourself. What is important is the humility to acknowledge those poor judgments and frailties we have. Because for us founders this is also a journey of discovering ourselves and becoming a better person, as much as a better founder.

When we work together as a team for a common purpose, beautiful things happen. We have now crossed 25 million downloads, 10 million monthly active users, 1 million daily active users, and our monthly revenue has more than tripled in the last 12 months. Our train app’s retention rate is close to Snapchat’s. Our flight app’s retention rate is better than all its peers. And millions of Indians (and their moms and dads) swear by our apps. That’s the most dhaakad achievement of the decade.