Deep Kalra

At TechSparks 2013 in Delhi, Deep took the audience through this journey before diving deep into the Makemytrip story. “It took me 8 years to figure out what I really wanted to do,” started Deep and then took us through all the highlights and how they mattered.

Deep went to St.Stephens College, Delhi in 1987 to pursue Bachelors in Economics from where he went to IIM-A for an MBA Degree. “I was 23 and fresh out of an MBA and it was a fairly obvious choice to go with the flow which people are trying to change now but back then, I took up a banking job,” says Deep. He worked with ABN Amro Bank and as most of us are, was really excited about his first job. But after 3 years, a sense of incompleteness set in and he decided banking was not something he wanted to do for the rest of his life. Deep quit ABN Amro and took a break for about a year to figure out what to do next.

While on his break, Deep got a number of well-paying marketing jobs but he decided to pick the craziest of all. “I wanted to do something touch-feel, on-the-ground kind of a thing and hence I took up the job of bringing AMF Bowling Inc. to India,” said Deep. The task was a herculean one as no one in India was really ready to invest in a bowling alley in the 90’s. Deep went around from place to place measuring places and setting up bowling alleys but the competition was just too tough. There were hardly any returns and competing against the giant chains like McDonalds’ was proving out to be impossible in terms of returns on real estate. Deep ran it for four years but decided to quit. “It was a great entrepreneurial experience but a financial disaster,” said Deep.

And after a little over a year with GE, Deep felt he was ready to take the plunge. Entering travel was not only because of the good experiences but a very clinical thought-out decision: it was too early for eCommerce back then and travel seemed like the right direction to move in. Mixing the idea with a proper business model, Makemytrip was born in the year 2000. And the rest, as they say, is history…