“With Google and Apple pushing towards data privacy, marketers will find it difficult to target and meet their numbers and this is not only in India, but all the large companies outside India that are looking to engage with the aspirational Indian population that wants to travel,” he added.
The AI-powered SaaS solutions provider for the hospitality and travel industry reported an 80% year-on-year growth in revenues for the quarter ended June and is looking to acquire one company each year for the next three years besides doubling its revenues.
“There are three growth vectors for us: continued penetration of what we do today, of all the different products that we have around data as a service, distribution and marketing technology; milking the investments that we made in new product development in reaching a tipping point and M&A. Since the last five years, we have acquired four companies except for the Covid year,” he said.
“So, I continue to see that trend play out. I do expect that we will acquire at least one company each year. I am confident that within this fiscal year, we will surpass the guidance that we have given,” he added.
RateGain’s board has approved raising of funds for an aggregate amount not exceeding Rs 600 crore through issue of equity shares by way of a qualified institutional placement. The company clocked revenues of Rs 214.48 crore for the quarter ended June, while its profit after tax was at Rs 25 crore, up from Rs 8.42 crore in corresponding period of the previous fiscal.
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Chopra said the growth has been robust and demand steady.“Earlier, it was the concept of revenge travel, but even now demand is holding quite steady given people’s attitudes towards life and travel. People want to have experiences and travel is a big part of that. The tailwinds are helping us. Some big fundamental shifts in the industry are leading to hypergrowth for RateGain,” he said.
“Our industry is facing labour shortages, especially in markets such as Europe and US and our solutions help solve these issues because we are digitising their workflows such as revenue management, marketing, distribution and pricing. The other big shift is the advent of AI. One of the big ingredients for AI models to work is data and one of our product lines is data as a service. So, the consumption of data is at an all-time high with all our enterprises,” he said.
“Through our acquisition of Adara, we can offer holistic end-to-end offerings to our customers around brand monitoring, brand engagement, and driving the maximum return on investment on the ad spends that they do. That has seen huge traction,” he added.
Chopra said the company is trending higher than most hotel companies right now. “One of the problems is hotels can’t increase their costs on manpower. Also, people don’t want to join hotels post the pandemic because they have found better alternatives. Now that they have recovered their revenue and have posted record profits, there are conversations going on where they are saying how do I build a better technology stack to engage Indians who are hooked to their devices,” he said.
“I have fewer people to do the same jobs, so I need better, scalable platforms. Some people already understand that and that’s why they are investing in us,” he added.
