![[Weekday Ep.] Building a ₹60,000 Cr Internet Travel Company: MakeMyTrip’s 25-Year Playbook | S4 E...](https://images.beamly.com/fetch/https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FMRcsvbMQzxQ%2Fmaxresdefault.jpg?w=365)
Back then, internet in India barely worked. Connections dropped. Credit cards failed online. People would use the internet to look for options, not book. And yet, **Deep Kalra** and **Rajesh Magow of MMT** bet on it. Their conviction? The internet *would* take off in India — eventually.
That long-term view, risk appetite, and patience became the defining pattern of **MakeMyTrip’s** 25-year journey — through crises, pivots, and comebacks.
In episode 4 of the Blume Podcast, host Karthik interviews Deep and Rajesh, founders of MMT, to learn how they built a $7B online travel company.
The company survived through the **dotcom bust**, **9/11**, and **SARS** — each hitting global travel harder than the last. The founders went without salaries, moved into a ₹12/sqft office, and scraped to survive. But they never stopped believing. And it paid off.
Between 2005 - 2010, *MakeMyTrip* grew **25×**. In 2010, they rang the **Nasdaq bell**, with **80% of employees** holding ESOPs that created real wealth overnight. From pivoting from desktop to a sleek mobile app, and later integrating **Goibibo** and **redBus**, they evolved constantly.
Every crisis, from 2001 to COVID, became a reset for sharper focus and stronger culture that enabled them to outpace the competition. As Rajesh says, “Every crisis gives you the license to fix what you couldn’t before.”
Today, *MakeMyTrip* is a **$7B+** company — but its founders are still hungry, its still Day 1 for them. With India’s macroeconomic tailwinds and AI poised to reshape travel, they believe the next chapter could be even bigger.
Watch the full weekday episode as host Karthik Reddy interviews Deep Kalra & Rajesh Magow* to understand how MMT changed the way Indians travel.
Season Partners: IDFC FIRST Bank and Ultrahuman (Blume portco)
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