2 hours of excercise, 2 lakh as bribe and a question

An hour of run followed by long jump, high jump and some more physical exercise is the routine for many in rural west Bengal (and may be in other states also). The practice is to get a job in force mainly in various opening in police and army. It is common that almost all houses have an aspirant who wants to join the force. It is not that they dream for that kind of job (as we see in Hindi movies) but is the only option for decent job. Due to various reasons like financial problem, absence of infrastructure for higher education and need to start earning to support family most of the young students from that area drop out from the education before or after 12th and start preparing for police and army selection. Most of the families’ hopes rely on the chance of him getting the job. However this is one part of the story. Like any other part of India, job mafia is rampant for the selection here as well. So clearing the physical tests is not enough, one need to pay anything between rupees 1 to 3 lakh to get the job. Still the job is the best available option and families do not have any other choice than arranging the money (some time by selling their lands). Still only 5-10% among them manages to succeed.

There is a war going on. I don’t know if it is for some ones right, or for politics or for something else. But who is fighting? The state? Or the rebels? However it does not matter. But who is losing? Obviously the common men in the affected area. We have seen many stories and coverage for that. And it is indeed true. However there is another set of people who are always in the losing side. They do not control the government policies, they do not hinder development in the under developed area and they do not take part in jangal mahal (the name is popular recently so used it) politics but they are doing their jobs as we do at our offices. I am talking about the jawans in special forces (24 of them got killed in shilda recently). Off course they suppose to know the risk of the job but they do not have other option than joining the army. But what kind of situation they were put in? They were staying at a temporary camp, in a publicly accessible place, they did not have any information, nobody bothered to inform then about a possible attack (though they had information) and the news is that the camp was strategically set up like that to protect a local politician! And remember Shilda is only one incident. We as nation fighting the internal terror! But how? With some long speeches, long meetings, in media debates and off course with some pawns (I am sorry for an outrageous word but don’t you think their situation is like that?) like then ones at Shilda. Off course we need forces to maintain law and order. But will the brutal force can win this war? I am sure the experts will fight it out in debate in television. But what about the families, whose dear ones, sole bread earners have demised?

All is well at Make My Trip (makemytrip.com)?

If we look at the financial results or user acquisition of MMT then from the surface it looks like the company is doing extremely well. But is there an undercurrent against the company? Did they fail to judge the pulse of the customers recently? There is no indication in results yet but if we dive deep then we can see some alarming trends.

User Demographics

Though MMT was started in US but looks like they could not penetrate much in the market and only 2.5% visitors come from US. Looks like MMT service is popular among 25-34 year old male customers as they constitute the biggest customer base of the company. It is expected that that group tends to travel more by air and buy holiday packages. But absence of female buyers from the same age group and buyers from the group 35-44 is striking.

User satisfaction and word of mouth

There was time when MMT used to draw favourable review from the users. But looks like the honeymoon period is over and the service has deteriorated. Only 29% of the users have recommended MMT in a forum at mouthshut.com and average rating in most of the parameters is 2 out of 5. The data for last one year is even more shattering as only 6% of the users recommended MMT and ratings came down to the lowest point of 1 out of 5. Though other online travel agents (OTA) also got similar ratings but some OTAs like ezeego1 managed to draw better reviews and recommendations.

Online traffic at Make My Trip

MMT is equally positioned with competitors like Yatra.com as far as searching of the site in internet is concern however interesting point to note is that MMT is popular in western and southern cities like Mumbai, Pune or Bangalore. However it cannot be said for cities like Delhi, Kolkata where competitors are ahead of MMT. In the traffic ranking the company is on par with top competitors, thanks to new rail and bus service introduced by the company, but page views in the site is lesser than the competitors. One alarming statistics is that around 40% of the visitors at MMT bounce back from the first page and does not explore the website at all. Competitors are positioned far better at around 20% of the users bouncing back. Similarly users spend lesser time in average at MMT than competitors. Average time at MMT is 4 minute but at competitors site it is around 6 minute. Around 20% of the visit at MMT comes from search engine as compare to 15% of the visit at competitors’ website. It is an indication that MMT is getting lesser number of repeat buyers than its competitors.

The statistics discussed above is not encouraging for MMT and the company should proactively work to seek solutions otherwise it can bring bigger threat to the company in future.

Source: mouthshut.com, Google Trend, Alexa