With an eye on the entire travel pie, MakeMyTrip is planning to enter a new market — inter-city taxi service — in order to continue to retain its market leadership in the travel sector.

“An area that we are toying with is the inter-city cab space. Since our customer base is leisure and business travellers, intra-city cabs is not our focus but inter-city is,” Rajesh Magow, co-founder and CEO-India, MakeMyTrip , told BusinessLine .

The company, which is banking on hotels and holiday packages to drive growth, wants to enter this sector to become a one-stop shop for all travel and travel-related needs of the Indian customer.

On whether the company would acquire start-ups or build an in-house team for this, he said: “At this point, we are open to anything. What we are very clear on, is that we want to be in this space. It makes total sense. Therefore, if we find a dedicated team doing a good job of it, we will make an investment. If not, we will build this in-house.”

Magow added that there are few start-ups doing inter-city cabs but MakeMyTrip has not yet zeroed in on whom it wants to back.

The idea is currently in the exploratory evaluation stage. “At the moment, we have got a dedicated analyst who is collecting data points, the players in this space and other details,” he added.

Stating that, intuitively, a market exists for this, Magow said this would fit the needs of travellers who, for instance, want to go on road trips or weekend getaways.

“This would also fit well with, say, students who come from various parts of the country and want to go back home or travel on routes such as Delhi-Jaipur, Delhi-Lucknow, Delhi-Chandigarh, Mumbai-Pune, and want to take a cab.”

The company currently works with vendors for inter-city taxi services.

MakeMyTrip, which is looking to grow and dominate the entire travel ecosystem, believes that inter-city cabs could also be an alternative to flights. “Potentially, in the future, we could also look at renting cars.”

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