MakeMyTrip said its attempt is to grow TripMoney, a 100% subsidiary, as an independent fintech arm of the company that will gradually evolve into a separate app for non captive customers.
TripMoney Fintech Solutions is aimed at building various tech led solutions to help simplify all travel related financial services of consumers.
“The broader idea was basically addressing the financial services product needs of the Indian travelers, given that our consumer base is the travel consumer base. With that idea we had started launching different products under TripMoney during the pandemic,” said Rajesh Magow, co-founder and group CEO, MakeMyTrip.
“TripMoney will have three verticals: credit vertical, insured tech -that will byte sized insurance products such as mobile insurance, Covid insurance, or home burglary insurance, and the third vertical will be forex. We will time forex with international travel opening up. We are eventually looking at also opening TripMoney as an independent app for those who are not our customers,” he added.
Sanjay Mohan, group CTO at MakeMyTrip said in the next few months, the company will launch the new app.
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“Currently TripMoney is structured as an independent entity within MakeMyTrip. It’s a travel tech fintech platform that is servicing the three brands that we have: MakeMyTrip, Goibibo and redBus. Their customers are coming as the beta customers. In a few months we will open it for the larger ecosystem,” he said.
The company said the Book Now Pay Later (BNPL) feature launched recently on TripMoney has received positive traction from MakeMyTrip and Goibibo customers and that in future, the company aims to leverage the growing opportunities within this segment in India.Launched during the pandemic, the TripMoney platform has so far facilitated more than 500,000 trips and has issued more than 2 million policies through its insurance services, MakeMytrip said.
MakeMyTrip has partnered with travel loan providers such as Capital Float, IDFC, ZestMoney and Simpl and its insurance partners include Aditya Birla Insurance, Cover Genius and Reliance Insurance.
“We are building this as a tech led, user experience led, and data driven offering from our side. Our endeavor is to simplify the nuances in the standalone offerings,” Mohan said. He said in a category like forex for instance, there is a lack of transparency on the mark up fee, on the actual forex conversion fee, and a fear that what happens if the money gets stolen.
“On the BPNL side, we are working mostly in conjunction with the banks and NBFCs, and we have almost half a dozen partners who are underwriting the credit. On the insurance front, we have partnered with almost 10-12 insurance partners,” he added.
Magow said the company is increasingly looking at use cases such as cancellation for any reason where it can give the assurance or work with insurance partners to lend such benefits to customers.
“All partners across products have been very receptive and flexible about bringing in more flexible cancellation rules,” he added.
Byte sized products under TripMoney will be priced anywhere ranging from Rs 49-199 and will be applicable for all modes of transport that MakeMyTrip offers.
