Startup Deep Dive : Yatra Online — corporate travel drove a nine-fold profit jump

In the financial year to March 2025, Yatra Online Limited grew revenue 87% to ₹791 crore and multiplied its net profit more than nine-fold, to ₹36.6 crore, its most profitable year to that point. Yet its shares still traded below the ₹142 at which they were sold in the company’s September 2023 Indian IPO, and a decade earlier the same brand had been the toast of New York, the second Indian internet company to reach the Nasdaq.

That gap between operating momentum and market reception is the story of Yatra. It is one of India’s oldest online travel brands, a company that survived a founder’s transatlantic bet, a near-sale to a US software group that ended in a Delaware courtroom, and years of losses in a market MakeMyTrip dominated. What finally turned the numbers was not the consumer website most Indians know, but the unglamorous business of booking flights and hotels for corporate employees. This piece traces how that happened, with every figure attributed to a filing or report opened while writing it.

Quick facts

What Yatra does

Yatra sells travel to two very different buyers. To consumers it is Yatra.com, an online travel agency where individuals book domestic and international flights, hotels, and holiday packages. To companies it is a managed corporate-travel provider: it runs the booking, approval, and expense workflow that a firm’s employees use when they fly for work, and it organises MICE events (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions). The company describes itself as India’s largest managed corporate-travel services provider, serving more than 1,300 large corporates and roughly 58,000 SME clients (company self-description via Screener, 2026). The two sides share one supply and technology base, but the corporate side is where the money increasingly sits.

The origin

Yatra was founded in 2006 by Dhruv Shringi, Manish Amin and Sabina Chopra, three executives who had worked together at Ebookers, a European online travel company (Wikipedia; StartupTalky). Shringi had been director of group operations and technology at the Ebookers group in London before returning to India to build a home-market equivalent. The insight was simple and, at the time, early: Indians were beginning to book travel online, air travel was being deregulated and low-cost carriers were multiplying, and the incumbent way of buying a ticket ran through a neighbourhood travel agent. A web-first agency could aggregate fares, take bookings around the clock, and scale in a way a shopfront could not.

The founders built the consumer brand first, then bought their way into adjacent businesses. In 2012 Yatra acquired the Travelguru hotel-aggregation business from Travelocity, deepening its hotels inventory (search results, DealStreetAsia/company). The brand grew from a three-person startup into a workforce that would eventually exceed 1,500 (company leadership materials via search). But the consumer travel market it had entered was about to become one of the most expensive battlegrounds in Indian e-commerce.

The struggle years

For most of its life Yatra competed against a better-capitalised leader, MakeMyTrip, and later against the aggressively low-cost EaseMyTrip. Online travel is a discount business: switching costs for consumers are near zero, and the standard way to win a booking is to give part of the margin back as a coupon. Yatra spent years buying growth this way and carrying the losses that came with it.

Its response was to lean into the corporate market, where relationships are stickier and price competition less brutal. On 23 July 2017 Yatra announced the acquisition of Air Travel Bureau (ATB), then described as India’s largest independent corporate travel services provider, with over 400 corporate clients and roughly ₹1,500 crore (INR 15 billion) in annual gross bookings; the deal price was not disclosed (PRNewswire, July 2017). CEO Dhruv Shringi said the combined entity would be the largest corporate travel platform in India by gross bookings.

The most dangerous chapter came next. On 16 July 2019 Yatra Online, Inc. signed a merger agreement to be acquired by the US software group Ebix in an all-stock deal valued at about $338 million (SEC filings; PhocusWire). The transaction dragged through 2019 and into the pandemic. On 14 May 2020 the two sides extended the outside date; then, on 5 June 2020, Yatra terminated the agreement and sued Ebix in the Delaware Court of Chancery, alleging breaches and bad-faith negotiation (SEC filings; BusinessToday, June 2020). The court ultimately sided with Ebix, finding the agreement’s terms eliminated the breach-of-contract claim once Yatra had terminated (Delaware Court of Chancery opinion; Exchange4media). Yatra emerged from the saga independent but bruised, and heading into the worst travel downturn in living memory as COVID-19 grounded flights.

The turning point

The turn came in two moves: a homecoming to the Indian markets, and a decisive push deeper into corporate travel.

The homecoming was the September 2023 IPO. Yatra Online Limited, the Indian operating entity, raised ₹775 crore (about $81 million at $1 ≈ ₹96.0) through an issue priced at ₹142 per share, with subscriptions open from 15 to 20 September 2023 (5paisa; Chittorgarh). Listing day, 28 September 2023, was a disappointment: the stock opened at ₹127.50 on the NSE, a 10.2% discount to the issue price, and at ₹130 on the BSE, an 8.5% discount (5paisa). The market’s cool reception did not, however, reflect what was happening inside the corporate business.

The second move was the acquisition of Globe All India Services (Globe Travels), completed on 11 September 2024 for ₹128 crore (INR 1,280 million, about $15.3 million) in cash (SEC filings; Skift, September 2024). Globe brought roughly 360 corporate customers and about $90 million in annual gross bookings, with little overlap in client base, positioning Yatra as one of India’s largest players in corporate travel and MICE. The effect showed up almost immediately in the FY25 results: full-year revenue rose 87% to ₹791.4 crore and net profit rose 912% to ₹36.6 crore (INR 366 million), driven by growth in corporate travel and MICE and the Globe contribution (MediaNama; Yatra Online, Inc. FY25 press release, 2025). A company that had bounced between small profits and losses for years had, in one year, changed shape.

The money behind it

Yatra was venture-funded long before it was publicly listed, and its cap table read like an early roll-call of Indian internet investors.

• Total private funding reported at about $87.5 million across six rounds from 14 investors (Tracxn, 2025-26 profile).
• Norwest Venture Partners backed the company early, making its first investment in 2006 in the Series A (Tracxn).
• Intel Capital came in at the Series B in 2008 (Tracxn).
• In April 2011 Yatra announced a ₹200 crore round from investors including Valiant Capital, Norwest and Intel Capital (Moneylife, 2011).
• Other named past backers include Reliance Capital and Network18 (search results, company/press).

The 2016 Nasdaq route was itself a financing event: Yatra Online, Inc. listed in December 2016 by merging with Terrapin 3 Acquisition Corp, a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC), making it, by the company’s account, only the second Indian e-commerce company to list in New York (Wikipedia; PhocusWire). That US-listed parent still exists and remains the promoter of the Indian entity: promoter holding in Yatra Online Limited was 62.66% as of the latest available Screener data (2026), held through Yatra Online, Inc. and affiliated holding companies. The 2023 India IPO’s ₹775 crore therefore did not go to venture investors cashing out so much as fund the next leg of the corporate-travel strategy.

How it makes money

Yatra earns a margin between what a traveller or company pays and what the airline or hotel charges, plus fees and incentives. The mechanics differ by side of the business:

• Air ticketing: revenue comes from service fees and airline incentives on flights booked. Volumes here have been shrinking as Yatra deliberately drops thin-margin consumer air bookings: in Q4 FY25 air-ticketing revenue rose 7% even as volume fell 24% (MediaNama).
• Hotels and packages: higher-margin than air; in Q4 FY25 this segment’s revenue rose 35% while volume dipped 1.7% (MediaNama), showing pricing and mix, not headcount, driving the gain.
• Corporate travel: the sticky core. Corporate bookings command a realisation about 1.5x higher than B2C, and Yatra’s customer-acquisition cost fell to 2.8% in Q4 FY25 from 4.7% in FY24 as it grew through existing corporate relationships (MediaNama).
• MICE: events revenue, boosted organically and by the Globe acquisition, which contributed about 10% of platform gross margin on an annualised basis (MediaNama).

The part people get wrong is assuming a travel agency wins by booking the most trips. Yatra’s recent profit came from booking fewer, better ones: cutting loss-making consumer air volume while growing high-realisation corporate and hotel revenue. Full-year FY26 gross margin (revenue less service cost) was ₹482.4 crore (INR 4,824 million) on gross bookings of about ₹8,053.6 crore (company FY26 results).

The numbers

The table below uses consolidated figures for Yatra Online Limited, the Indian listed entity. Note that the US parent, Yatra Online, Inc., reports on a different consolidation and can show a loss in years where the Indian entity shows a profit, because of additional holding-company costs; the figures here are the Indian entity’s.

FY22–FY25 revenue and profit figures are from Screener’s consolidated data for Yatra Online Limited; FY26 figures are from the company’s FY26 results (revenue up 27.2% to INR 10,065 million; PAT up 28.1% to INR 468 million; EBITDA up 53.2% to INR 855 million). FY25’s profit surge (net profit up 912% to INR 366 million) is the standout year, and FY26 confirmed it was not a one-off: FY26 was described as the company’s most profitable year ever (company results; TipRanks, 2026).

Where the money comes from

The revealing split is by customer type, not product.

• Corporate/B2B is now the majority of bookings: corporate accounted for about 65% of gross bookings in Q4 FY25 (MediaNama).
• Market share is still modest: Yatra put its corporate market share at about 9% among roughly 13,000 identified managed corporate-travel companies in India (MediaNama, Q4 FY25) — leadership by revenue, but a long runway.
• Client additions are the growth engine: in Q4 FY25 it added 35 corporate clients expected to contribute about ₹140 crore of annual business; across FY26 it added 163 new corporate customers with expected annual volumes of about ₹956.8 crore (INR 9,568 million) (MediaNama; company FY26 results).
• Consumer travel is being managed for margin, not volume: air-ticketing volume fell 24% YoY in Q4 FY25 by design, as the company exited thin-margin bookings (MediaNama).

The surprise for anyone who knows Yatra as a consumer website: the growth and the profit are increasingly a B2B story, and the consumer brand functions partly as a supply and technology base that the corporate business rides on.

The risks

• Profit quality and reliance on other income: in Q4 FY26, other income of ₹10.36 crore was equal to 183% of profit before tax of ₹5.66 crore, meaning core operations before other income actually ran a loss of about ₹4.70 crore that quarter, with operating margin around 5.76% (MarketsMojo analysis of Q4 FY26). Investors should watch whether operating profit, not treasury income, is carrying earnings.
• Intense, margin-eroding competition: Yatra competes with the far larger MakeMyTrip and the low-cost EaseMyTrip in a business with near-zero switching costs and heavy discounting, which pressures margins (search results; MarketsMojo).
• Disintermediation: airlines and hotels increasingly push direct bookings, which can squeeze the fees and incentives an online travel agency earns (search results).
• Integration and acquisition dependence: recent growth leans on acquisitions (ATB in 2017, Globe in 2024); realising the promised synergies from folding a largely offline corporate-travel business onto Yatra’s digital platform is an execution risk (SEC filings; Skift).

The takeaway

Yatra’s lesson is that a consumer brand can be worth more as a channel than as a destination. For nearly two decades the visible business was Yatra.com, fighting a discount war it was never going to win outright against a bigger rival. The value was hiding in the less glamorous corporate and MICE operations, built through the ATB and Globe acquisitions, where customers stay, realisations are higher, and acquisition costs are lower. The company survived a decade on Nasdaq, a collapsed $338 million sale that ended in litigation, and a pandemic, and only found sustained profit when it stopped measuring success by consumer bookings and started measuring it by corporate margin. The market has yet to fully re-rate the shares to match that shift — which is either the risk or the opportunity, depending on whether FY25 and FY26 prove to be the start of a trend rather than a peak.

Frequently asked questions

Is Yatra Online listed on the stock market?

Yes. Yatra Online Limited, the Indian operating entity, listed on the NSE and BSE on 28 September 2023 after an IPO priced at ₹142 per share that raised ₹775 crore. Separately, the US parent, Yatra Online, Inc., has been listed on the Nasdaq since a 2016 SPAC merger (5paisa; Wikipedia).

Who founded Yatra and when?

Yatra was founded in 2006 by Dhruv Shringi, Manish Amin and Sabina Chopra, former colleagues from the European online travel group Ebookers. Dhruv Shringi remains the CEO (Wikipedia; StartupTalky).

How does Yatra make most of its money now?

Increasingly from corporate travel and MICE rather than the consumer website. Corporate accounted for about 65% of gross bookings in Q4 FY25, and corporate bookings carry a realisation about 1.5x higher than consumer bookings (MediaNama).

What happened with the Ebix merger?

Yatra Online, Inc. agreed in July 2019 to be acquired by US software group Ebix in an all-stock deal valued at about $338 million. Yatra terminated the agreement in June 2020 and sued Ebix in Delaware; the court ultimately ruled in Ebix’s favour on the breach-of-contract claim (SEC filings; BusinessToday; Delaware Court of Chancery).

Is Yatra profitable?

The Indian listed entity, Yatra Online Limited, reported net profit of ₹36.6 crore in FY25 (up 912%) and ₹46.8 crore in FY26 (up 28.1%), its most profitable year. The US parent, Yatra Online, Inc., reports on a different consolidation and can show a loss in the same period (company results; MediaNama).

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• 5paisa — Yatra Online IPO listing details (September 2023)
• Chittorgarh — Yatra Online IPO date, price and issue details (2023)
• MediaNama — “Yatra Q4 FY25 Profit Soars 173%, Revenue Doubles” (June 2025)
• Yatra Online, Inc. — FY25 and quarterly press releases via investors.yatra.com and q4cdn (2025)
• Screener.in — Yatra Online Ltd consolidated financials, market cap and shareholding (accessed September 2026)
• Company FY26 results / TipRanks — “Yatra Online Delivers Record FY26 Profit” (2026)
• MarketsMojo — Yatra Online Q4 FY26 result analysis (2026)
• SEC EDGAR / Skift / Yahoo Finance — Globe All India Services (Globe Travels) acquisition (September 2024)
• PRNewswire — Yatra acquisition of Air Travel Bureau (July 2017)
• SEC EDGAR / PhocusWire / BusinessToday / Exchange4media / Delaware Court of Chancery — Yatra–Ebix merger and litigation (2019–2020)
• Tracxn — Yatra funding rounds and investors (2025–26 profile)
• Moneylife — Yatra ₹200 crore funding round (2011)
• Wikipedia; StartupTalky; PhocusWire — Yatra founding, Nasdaq/SPAC listing and leadership
• Trading Economics — USD/INR reference rate (18 September 2026)

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