
SeedToScale · 2026-02-24 · 47 min
In this episode of PitchCraft, Ixigo MD and Group CEO Aloke Bajpai joins early investor Shailesh Lakhani to revisit the company’s 2016 Series B deck, a moment that captured Ixigo at an inflection point in India’s evolving travel market. The conversation traces how Ixigo moved beyond being a travel meta-search engine by focusing relentlessly on solving customer pain points across flights, trains, and buses, while betting early on mobile growth and product-led innovation. Shailesh reflects on what built conviction after years of tracking the founders: disciplined execution, resilience through multiple crises, and the willingness to pivot from aggregation to owning transactions when customer experience demanded it. They unpack the strategic shifts, and long-term decisions that shaped Ixigo’s journey from startup to publicly listed travel technology leader.