Version 1: ixigo swings to a Rs 63 crore profit, and its hotel business has hit critical mass

The travel app's Q2 revenue rose 13%. A one-time gain helped the profit, but hotels are now booking over 5,000 room nights a day.

Picture this. Every single day, guests book more than 5,000 hotel room nights in India through an app that most people know for train tickets. That app is ixigo. On 17 October 2026, the company shared its results for July to September, and two things stood out: it made a profit of Rs 63.42 crore, and its young hotel business has grown big enough to stand on its own.

A year earlier, in the same three months, ixigo had made a loss of Rs 3.46 crore. So what changed? Some of it is real growth, and some of it is a one-time boost. Here is the whole story in plain words.

First, a few simple words

Companies report their numbers every three months. Each block of three months is called a quarter. July to September is the second quarter, or Q2, of India's money year, which starts in April.

Revenue is all the money that comes in from selling things. Profit is what is left after paying every bill. Think of a chai stall. If it sells chai worth Rs 1,000 in a day, that is revenue. If milk, sugar, gas and rent cost Rs 800, the profit is Rs 200.

ixigo is an online travel company. It helps people book trains, buses, flights and hotels, and it earns a small cut on each booking.

The big numbers

ixigo's revenue from operations rose 12.9% to Rs 321 crore, up from Rs 284.2 crore a year before. That is the "13%" in the headlines.

The total value of all the tickets and rooms people booked on the app was Rs 5,304.5 crore, up 22% from a year earlier. This is called GTV, or gross transaction value. It is not ixigo's own money. If a friend books a Rs 1,000 train ticket on the app, the full Rs 1,000 counts in GTV, but ixigo only keeps its small fee.

The company said its profit was an all-time high for a quarter.

Two cards: a loss of Rs 3.5 crore in Q2 last year, and a profit of Rs 63.4 crore in Q2 this year — From a small loss to its biggest quarterly profit, with help from a one-time gain.

The catch: a one-time gift

Part of this profit did not come from selling tickets. ixigo owned a piece of Freshbus, a company that runs electric buses between cities. In August, it sold some of those shares for Rs 36.6 crore, cutting its share of Freshbus from 25.66% to 8.27%.

Because of this sale, ixigo booked a one-time gain of Rs 40.7 crore. Companies call this an "exceptional" item, because it will not happen every quarter. It is like finding a big tip in your pocket money one month. Nice, but you cannot plan on it next month.

Before this gain and before tax, ixigo made a profit of Rs 31 crore. That is still far better than the Rs 4 crore loss a year earlier. But it was lower than the Rs 44.2 crore it made in April to June.

Hotels: the small shop that grew up fast

This is the part the company is most excited about. For the first time, ixigo showed its hotel business as a separate segment in its results. A segment is just one part of a business, shown with its own numbers, like a school report card that lists each subject.

Hotel GTV jumped 158.7% to Rs 111.3 crore, from Rs 43 crore a year earlier. Hotel revenue went from Rs 1.3 crore to Rs 8.1 crore. That is more than six times as much in one year.

A number counting up to Rs 111.3 crore of hotel bookings, with a tall bar next to a short bar for last year's Rs 43 crore — Hotel bookings on ixigo, July to September 2026 versus a year earlier.

Guests booked more than 4.7 lakh room nights in the quarter, up 295%. One room night means one room for one night. So two friends sharing one room for three nights count as three room nights.

Group CEO Aloke Bajpai told The Economic Times why the company now shows hotels on their own: "we hit a critical mass, crossing 5,000 room nights per day, growing 3.9x year on year." Critical mass means a business has become big enough to keep growing with its own speed, like a snowball that is now large enough to keep rolling.

He also said, "Very few OTAs in the country have ever crossed that number." An OTA is an online travel agency, such as ixigo itself.

Why hotels matter so much

The secret is a number called the take rate. It is the share of each booking that the company keeps. ixigo's hotel take rate was 12.04%, the highest of all its businesses. In flights, it was 7%. So on a Rs 100 hotel booking, ixigo keeps about Rs 12. On a Rs 100 flight, it keeps about Rs 7.

And ixigo does not have to hunt far for hotel guests. More than 86% of hotel bookings came from people who already use the app. Bajpai said this growth comes from within its funnel of 86 million monthly active users, meaning people who open the app at least once a month.

Four steps: book a train, bus or flight; the app shows a room; you book the room; ixigo keeps about Rs 12 of every Rs 100 — How a ticket buyer turns into a hotel guest.

The company also bought a 54.66% stake in Brevistay, a platform for short and flexible hotel stays, for Rs 65.7 crore. Bajpai said Brevistay's team helped add 2,000 properties in the last quarter alone. ixigo now lists more than 70,000 properties, including over 12,000 that it signs up directly, across 1,100 towns.

The hotel business is still losing a little money. Its contribution loss was Rs 1.2 crore, though that was much smaller than the Rs 5.7 crore in the quarter before. Bajpai said the company is confident triple-digit growth will continue, which means it expects hotels to more than double again.

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Trains, buses and flights

Trains are still ixigo's biggest earner. Train revenue rose 16.4% to Rs 149.1 crore. Buses did well too: bus revenue grew 23.8% to Rs 81 crore. The company said high airfares and the trouble of getting confirmed train tickets pushed more people onto intercity buses.

Flights were the weak spot. More people booked flights, and flight GTV grew 37.2%. But flight revenue fell 7.5% to Rs 82.7 crore, because ixigo kept a smaller cut of each ticket. Bajpai said fares were high and airlines like Air India and IndiGo kept fewer planes flying, so the whole market shrank by 5% to 6% in the quarter.

International trips were the bright side. Bookings for international flights grew 59% year on year, with Hanoi in Vietnam doubling, and Bali, Colombo and Bangkok up more than 70%.

Robots on the help desk

ixigo also uses AI to answer customer questions. In the quarter, AI agents handled 82% of voice queries and 94% of chat queries, solving 43 lakh questions in total. In their joint statement, the company's top leaders said: "We continue to invest in hotels and AI as key drivers of our long-term growth."

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What it means for you

If you travel by train or bus for college or a first job, ixigo wants to be the app that also books your room when you get there. The plan is simple: you already trust it for the ticket, so why not the bed too?

The headline profit looks huge partly because of the Freshbus sale. The real test is whether the hotel business keeps doubling without that one-time help. The next few quarters will tell.

As it was first published

ixigo swings to a Rs 63 crore profit, and its hotel business has hit critical mass