Startups can be a long, punishing grind, but the results can often make it all worth it.
Ixigo’s founders are set to make nearly Rs. 300 crore each after the company’s IPO. Ixigo has set its price band of shares at between Rs. 88-93 per share, valuing the company at Rs. 3,500 crore. Aloke Bajpai, who is the company’s Chairman, MD and co-CEO, and Rajnish Kumar, who is Ixigo’s Director and co-CEO, will see a large payday through the IPO process.
Pre IPO, Aloke Bajpai holds 3.08 crore Ixigo shares, while his co-founder Rajnish Kumar owns 3.22 crore Ixigo shares. At the top end of the price band, Bajpai’s shares will be worth Rs. 286 crore, while Rajnish Kumar’s shares will be worth Rs. 300 crore. Both founders are selling 1.19 crore shares each in the IPO, so they’ll immediately net Rs. 100 crore each when the listing takes place.
It’s not only the founders who’ll make bank when Ixigo goes public. Over the years, SAIF Partners had put in Rs. 63 crore into the company, which will turn into Rs. 821 crore at the IPO, which would be a 13x return on the initial investment. Peak XV Partners had put in Rs. 67 crore into the company, which will turn into Rs. 550 crore, implying an 8x return. Interestingly, former Indian phone maker Micromax had also put in Rs. 26 crore into the company, and will see a more than 10x return with its stake being worth around Rs. 286 crore after the IPO.
These are all impressive numbers, but they haven’t come easy. Ixigo was founded all the way back in in 2007 by IIT Kanpur batchmates Aloke Bajpai and Rajnish Kumar. The duo were working in Europe, but had decided to quit and return to start a company in India. They initially founded Ixigo as a meta search engine for flight tickets, and even raised funding from OTA operator MakeMyTrip. Over the next few years, Ixigo focused on several verticals in the travel business, including train booking apps and hotel bookings. Ixigo’s train booking apps, named ConfirmTkt and and Ixigo Trains are especially popular, and help the company stand out in what’s a very crowded space. The company also had acquired bus ticket booking platform Abhibus in 2021. Ixigo today runs a suite of travel apps, and earned revenue of Rs. 501 crore in FY23. Even more impressively, it’s profitable, having registered a profit of Rs. 23 crore in the same period.
And after a 17-year-long journey, Ixigo is set to give its founders a substantial payday. It hasn’t come easy — Ixigo has had to battle competition both from incumbents like MakeMyTrip, as well as upstarts including EasyMyTrip, and a bevy of other players including Yatra, Cleartrip and Ibibo. The company also had to survive the Covid onslaught, which had ground the entire travel sector to a halt. But the founders have persevered, and now managed to net themselves some very handsome returns for their efforts over the last decade and a half.