Flipkart is further strengthening its travel offering by introducing an enhanced native experience in partnership with ixigo, one of India’s leading mobile travel platforms. With an aim to provide simplified access to quality airfare, Flipkart and ixigo have come together to solve for an ever-growing consumer demand and have built a product that is India-first. The flight offering from Flipkart now includes an industry-first SuperCoins redemption for bookings.
Air travel is growing rapidly across tier 2 cities, owing to the government's ambitious UDAN initiative. Over the past one year, Flipkart has witnessed more than 50 million searches for travel alone on its platform, with close to 50% of those queries from tier 2 and 3 cities. This presents a vast opportunity to solve for these consumers in a meaningful way, by building an ecosystem of services that can make their experience better.
As more people gain access to air travel facilities, it is important that they are given the right platform to make the best choices. Flipkart’s latest travel offering covers the entire spectrum of airlines globally, while enabling users to book flight tickets for all domestic and international routes. Customer loyalty is integral to Flipkart and it has introduced a first-of-its-kind rewards integration where customers can redeem their SuperCoins earned on Flipkart against the full price of their flight ticket.
Speaking about Flipkart’s enhanced native travel experience, Prakash Sikaria, Vice President, Growth & Monetization at Flipkart said, “AirTravel is a growing category online, especially across tier 2 cities, and we have seen a 10X growth since we ventured into the travel category in a limited manner last year. We are deepening our commitment by enhancing the user experience with our new launch and have collaborated with ixigo to create a best-in-class travel experience for our customers. We are also excited about the SuperCoins redemption as it will unlock unparalleled value for Indian customers, making Flipkart the most affordable destination for air travel bookings.”
Flipkart has designed its travel interface with tier 2 & 3 city customers in mind, and will be focussing on empowering the next 100 million customers online, who primarily use offline options to book their travel, by offering them a seamless experience online.
Announcing the partnership, Aloke Bajpai, Co-Founder & CEO of ixigo said, “We are excited to partner with Flipkart, the leading eCommerce player in India. ixigo and Flipkart both share a common vision of driving faster growth in the next billion users segment hailing from tier 2, 3 & 4 cities, and growing the online travel market in India through deeper collaboration. We are building upon our decade-long domain experience in meta-search to enable the most competitive inventory and pricing to be offered to Flipkart customers. We look forward to co-creating the best travel booking experience globally on any e-commerce platform!”
Flipkart’s native travel experience is now available to all customers on the Flipkart mobile app, on both Android and iOS.