Indian OTA Yatra.com had a quiet start to life on the Nasdaq yesterday, although Dhruv Shringi, co-founder and CEO, did get to ring the closing bell.
Shares debuted on Tuesday at $10 and closed at $9.70, having hit a high of $10.15 and a low of $8.40 during the day.
However, less than 10,000 shares were traded during the day.
At $10 a share its market capitalization is $355 million.
The move came about as part of a reverse merger with an acquisition vehicle, Terrapin 3. As part of the process, Yatra has raised $92.5 million of capital which has reportedly been earmarked to ramp up its presence in India's tier two and tier three cities.
At a presentation last month, which drilled down into operational and financial details for potential investors, Yatra said that it will be in the black - on an adjusted EBITDA basis - for the year to end-March 2019 and that it can meet this target without additional funding.
Despite being the number two player in India after MakeMyTrip, Yatra does have some areas where it has the edge, such as being the only Indian OTA with channels serving with consumers, corporates and travel agents.
More than 14,000 agents across India are signed up to Yatra and, as the presentation points out, many Indians still pay for their travel using cash. But having an offline presence also puts it in a position to capture offline-to-online business.
It is worth noting that the presentation took place before the Indian government's demonitization policy was announced. Yatra itself noted a "drastic dip" in offline bookings as a result.
Another area where it sees an advantage over MakeMyTrip is via its strategic partnership with Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries. The deal, which also includes an equity stake in the business for Reliance, means the Yatra app is preinstalled on its partner's smartphones, which "will substantially lower...customer acquisition costs and...increase our mobile app install base by up to 6x."
Currently its apps have been downloaded 7 million times and 59% of its traffic already comes from mobile. It also said that more than 80% of the visits to the site comes from free traffic and that 74% of its business comes from repeat customers.
Related reading:
Yatra brings in Travel-Logs for new urban tours brand (Jan16)
Yatra launches Facebook Messenger bot (July16)