The online travel industry has seen tremendous growth in recent years and is the most crowded arena in the e-commerce segment with many new players entering this space. Being a pioneer in this aggressive market space, MakeMyTrip, has had to innovate on talent hiring. Hiring the right kind of people is the key to a company’s success. Being in a young and growing company, there is a need to hire bright people with a lot of enthusiasm. While hiring, they look for both aptitude and attitude. Aptitude is assessed through a test while attitude is gauged during the interview. Care is taken to ensure that they pick those with team spirit. The work culture and attention to employee well-being and growth has ensured that employee retention is not a concern for the organization. In fact, the company still has many people who joined in the first year of its business and continue to contribute till date.

The company uniqueness is that it emphasises on giving latitude to their existing employees, by means of more freedom and empowerment at work. Today, a 22-year-old at MakeMyTrip can be doing a job which may have a significant impact on the overall revenue. There is also recognition of the fact that the younger generation knows more about technology than even the founding team, and that drives the need to provide empowerment and freedom as technology is at the backbone of innovation in the online travel industry. “Some of our biggest businesses at MakyMytrip are driven by the youngest managers, for example, the flights business, which is the largest vertical, is driven by the youngest manager,” says Keyur Joshi, Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer at MakeMyTrip. Having the best people in technology can actually be a game changer. The culture allows people to experiment and make mistakes, and this creates a comfortable atmosphere for employees to go out of their way and take risks.

The values at MakeMyTrip represent teamwork, passion, and ‘fun@work’, which are the foundations of who they are. They make an effort to stay connected with employees at all levels. The CEO has lunch with a group of junior employees every week to understand how things are going, what is going on and what needs attention. Each one is given a sheet of paper and asked to respond to what they think is great about the company and what is not, as if they were the CEO, and this is done in complete confidentiality and the management has been drawing great inputs from these initiatives.

There is a clear belief that the company can do better in everything they undertake. Keeping this philosophy of continuous improvement in mind, they aspire to be featured as one of Asia’s best employers. This constant effort to improve and do better is looked at as a journey at MakeMyTrip. Given their global presence, their focus has undergone a change and the company has become more agile to align themselves to the changing needs as they grow further. In the new game, talent management has become a focal area, making talent development and building global systems the critical action points in the coming year.