India's leading Travel Search Engine iXiGO goes mobile

[Mayank Joshi]

iXiGO.com, India’s award-winning online travel search engine is now mobile-ready! iXiGO announced the launch of its travel search engine for mobile phones on http://m.ixigo.com, bringing its consumer-friendly search technology from web browsers to mobile phones.

iXiGO aims to expand its reach beyond the internet-savvy early-adopters to mobile-savvy travelers by tapping India’s 60 million GPRS enabled phones out of the 300 million Indian mobile subscribers. “The potential for iXiGO Mobile is immense”, said Aloke Bajpai, Founder-CEO of iXiGO, “Our mobile users wanted the ability to search across airline sites without having to call up a travel portal, since portals charge additional booking fees. Specially for hotel bookings, this is a great feature-rich product for last-minute booking decisions while you are on the way to your destination – easy to use while you are in a train or an airport lounge”.

iXiGO Mobile searches across flights and hotels in India and features a click-to-call booking mechanism enabling people to speak directly with the call centres of respective airlines and hotel booking providers, saving them time, effort and money. Commenting on future plans, Bajpai said, “Next, we will be actively signing up distribution partners for this service – operators, mobile VAS providers and mobile media companies. They will benefit from a great mobile travel product and quality content, and we will expand our pan-India reach”.

Stressing on the unique features of the product, Rajnish Kumar, co-Founder and CTO, added, “iXiGO Mobile is compatible with all major handsets with a GPRS-enabled subscription. It adapts well to the phone form factors while retaining richness of features found in our Internet version, including photos, maps, and filters. We have also optimized the pages for slower GPRS connections.”

In an environment where airlines are reducing dependance on travel agencies nullifying commissions, iXiGO’s direct-booking model by-passes online travel agents and allows users to save booking fees charged by them. It also provides a more comprehensive and unbiased display of travel options.

[Baani]

iXiGO.com is India’s leading online and mobile travel search engine based out of Gurgaon. iXiGO searches across multiple airlines, hotels, and bus booking sites and finds the best travel deals in India. Launched in June 2007 by an entrepreneurial team of young IITians and INSEAD MBAs, iXiGO.com has been recognized by NASSCOM as India’s Top-100 Innovator; BusinessToday and WSJ-Mint have named it among India’s hottest startups for its unique market approach, product usability, and passionate management team. iXiGO is backed by BAF Spectrum, a Singapore-based seed-investment fund. For more information about iXiGO, visit www.ixigo.com.