India’s TMC Itilite Gains Ground with U.S. Customers

Itilite, a “technology-first” travel management company based in Bengaluru, India, is accelerating its expansion in the United States, working to build a reputation among small and mid-sized customers before targeting larger programs.

With about 400 total customers today, Itilite launched in India about six years ago, but it has only been building its business in the United States for about a year and a half, founder and CEO Mayank Kukreja said. Both midsize and large clients in India had multinational travel needs, which “forced us to build up some inventory and support” in the U.S., he said. “We said, ‘It’s a large market, so why don’t we sell here?'”

The TMC’s latest round of funding, announced in April, was particularly set aside for U.S. expansion, Kukreja said. At the start of the year, it had only about 20 to 25 customers in the U.S., and it now is adding customers at the rate of about 20 to 25 per month, he said. Its current “sweet spot” in the U.S. is customers with between $1 million and $30 million in annual travel spend. While the company has the capability to serve larger customers, it’s holding off on pursuing them until it can build name recognition, Kukreja said.

“We have gone to a few, and they say, ‘You have an amazing product, but who are you?'” he said.

One of Itilite’s selling points for customers is its booking engine, which Kukreja said is meant to “replicate the behavior…of a great travel assistant.” The engine can analyze travelers’ profile, needs and history to offer a first selection of only three booking options rather than a long list of options to scroll through. Travelers can move on to additional options if none of the three meets their needs, but Kukreja said they select one of the three first options 90 percent of the time. Booking time from login in to ticketing averages about 90 to 100 seconds, he said.

Content comes from a mix of sources, including global distribution systems, multiple consolidators and “a lot of direct connects,” Kukreja said. Over the past year, the TMC has worked to close content gaps for U.S. customers, he said.

Kukreja also touted Itilite’s Mastermind product that is designed to act as a virtual consultant. Rather than presenting travel data solely as a series of charts and graphs, Mastermind analyzes the company’s metrics against benchmarking data and spells out missed savings and actions that could achieve them, such as getting travelers to book earlier or within policy guidelines, he said.

It gives travel managers the options to automatically implement actions to solve those issues, he said. For example, if one group within the company was consistently booking out of policy, it could turn on an approval process just for that group. Itilite also has an early booking rewards program that gives employees a small incentive for booking early, which Kukreja claims brings an average of 20 percent to 30 percent improvement in early booking savings when implemented.

Itilite’s travel and expense platforms are available as separate offerings—companies can be customers of only travel, only expense or both, Kukreja said. The booking engine, however, is available only to Itilite’s travel customers. It cannot be used as a standalone tool or with another TMC, he said.

Implementation generally takes about a week or less, though for customers with more complex needs, such as integration into some of their internal systems like accounting, it can take up to four weeks, Kukreja said. For pricing, Itilite has opted for a standard transaction-based model, with customers paying a per-trip fee without any upfront charges.

“We tried a lot of different models, but one thing we learned was that it’s not great to innovate on pricing,” he said. “Let’s innovate on the product and go with the pricing that the market understands.”

Michael B. Baker www.businesstravelnews.com