After a rough start to the year, which saw it let go the China Business Team, Mystifly is back on track doing what it does best – “being an intermediary business that creates value for its partners”, said CEO Rajeev Kumar.
“Sometimes you think maybe there’s a better way, and you say, Rajeev, maybe you should give it a go. The road with China was about bringing in fresh energy, breaking some monotonous thinking so we could take the next leap.”
Asked how the year has been, he said, “It’s been a roller coaster of a year. It started out with the difficult decision to let go of what we were trying to build in China. We had three to four months of upheaval but by April 19, we were back on the path to profitability and by June, we had a positive turnaround.”
The company is now back to double digit month on month growth, he said.
Asked what went wrong, Kumar said, “We focused more on the output and became very transaction-driven. Our core belief was, if you want to be an intermediary business, you have to create value. Without you adding value to the value chain, there is no reason for you to exist. Our reason for existence is to take away pain points for our customers, that’s why customers work with us.
“We made mistakes on the way. It was very painful to let go what was being built, because we had invested quite a lot in the process. But our attitude is, take the pain, admit the mistake and move on.”
Kumar clarified that while it parted ways with its China Team, it doesn’t mean it’s lost all its China business. “We value our partners in China. The difference is, we are not losing money anymore.”
The biggest lesson he learnt? “If you are an intermediary, your core proposition is value creation, it cannot be competing on price. Of the many lessons, that’s the one.
When asked what does “back on track” mean to Mystifly, he clarified that it’s about solving pain points for their customers, where it matters. As an example, Mystifly recently launched a new feature – ‘OnePoint C2’ – in a move to simplify the post ticketing experience.
Geared towards enhancing the customer experience for travel intermediaries, C2 enables guaranteed single click cancellations and automated ticket change. Combined with Mystifly’s One Point API, C2 empowers OTA’s, horizontal/vertical ecommerce providers & others to sell air travel in a seamless manner.
Features that make C2 a unique proposition for OTAs include:
- Instant guaranteed penalty costs for air ticket refunds/changes
- Over 200 airlines covered
- Debit Memo free one-click air ticket refund/ticket change API
Said Kumar, “With our latest offering – C2, we melded our experience in the global airfare marketplace, deep domain expertise, petabytes of data, and knowledge of machine learning technology, to create a product that instantly and accurately updates penalty costs for rescheduling/cancellation requests. This simple yet effective process does away with the mundane and paves the way for more efficient retailing.”
Rajeev Kumar: ““This decade will see a revolution in air retailing.”
He added, “We all talk about the big things in travel tech but when you book an airticket and you wish to cancel, you still have to call the call centre. We fix the little things that really matter, that’s how we differentiate.”
Mystifly has also launched a new schema for its One Point API which “allows for a lot more nuances to be solved”, said Kumar. With everyone vying to deliver the connected trip, there’s no shortage of new players wanting flight content.
As Kumar said, “This decade will see a revolution in air retailing. In the industry where everyone is vying to deliver the connected trip and give the best customer experience, there is no shortage of new players wanting to explore the travel domain. C2 creates the opportunity for intermediaries, bed banks and e-commerce companies to sell air travel in a seamless manner. We focus on the intricacies of selling flights and air retailing. Because that’s the only thing we do, we can put all our resources in addressing that challenge in the best way possible.”
Asked what was his outlook for 2020, he said, “Change creates opportunities and I think 2020 will be even more exciting. The hard work we have put in is starting to show the results on both customers and the supplier side. If you are a marketplace, and you have great connectivity but no demand, then it fails.
“We’ve spent the last 10 years in solving distribution, fulfilment and payments in the air industry and we still have a long way to go. Our marketplace offerings have built quality demand and supply because of its ability to address the deficiencies of the past, and that fortunately is allowing us to be forward-looking. That’s the challenge – legacies cannot be ignored, and we have to bridge that with the future.”