Aloke Bajpai is the Co-founder and CEO of ixigo.com a platform that aggregates and compares real-time travel information, prices and availability for flights, trains, buses, and hotels, and allows ticket booking through its associate websites and apps. Since ixigo's launch in 2007, the company has gone from a bootstrapped startup to India’s leading travel search and planning business, with over 20 million active users every month across mobile and web.

Aloke graduated from IIT Kanpur in 2001 and started his career at Amadeus in Europe where he held key product and technology roles, building and managing large scale web-based products and networks for the first four years of his career. He then went to INSEAD for his MBA, and returned to India to build ixigo.

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Episode Notes:

1. Intro (2:15)
2. Why entrepreneurship (4:11)
3. What frameworks did Aloke decide to take the plunge into entrepreneurship (11:20)
4. Why did Aloke pick travel as an industry to disrupt (14:35)
5. The Aha-moment for Ixigo (17:38)
6. Conversations with VCs in the early-stages (24:15)
7. How did Aloke and team convince their first investors (30:00)
8. Leveraging VCs to grow the company (32:40)
9. Evolution of Aloke’s leadership styles over the Yeats (37:40)
10. How do you build a strong internal company culture (42:15)
11. How did Ixigo navigate the pandemic and the challenges that came with it? (46:50)
12. Overall learnings building Ixigo (55:20)
13. Advice to younger self (59:18)

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Social Links:

ixigo on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ixigo

Aloke on Twitter: https://twitter.com/alokebajpai

Podcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thedesi_vc

Akash Bhat on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bhatvakash

Podcast on Instagram: https://instagram.com/thedesivc

Akash Bhat on Instagram: https://instagram.com/bhatvakash