ixigo Wins People's Choice Runner-Up Award for Travel Innovation at Phocuswright Launch

ixigo, India’s leading travel search marketplace has bagged the People’s Choice Runner-up award for ‘Travel Innovation’ at Launch, part of the Phocuswright Innovation Platform, held in Florida, last week. At the event, ixigo announced the launch of its upcoming artificial intelligence travel assistant - TARA (Youtube Link)

ixigo - TARA

Phocuswright is a leading travel research and events organisation, providing unrivaled travel, tourism and hospitality market research. Launch provides established companies that are ready to unveil a groundbreaking innovation with a spot in the limelight and a chance to wow the travel industry's most savvy and engaged audience during The Phocuswright Conference. Apart from ixigo, leading industry players demonstrated groundbreaking solutions aimed at changing the travel landscape, competing for the most coveted travel innovation awards in Florida from November 6-9, 2017.

Rajnish Kumar, CTO & Co-Founder, ixigo showcased TARA, its voice enabled, 100% AI-driven travel assistant that helps users discover, plan, book and manage their travel. TARA received overwhelming appreciation and votes, both from the jury and the attendees for features that are first in the world, such as emotive voice based assistance, pre-emptive trip planning, automated frequent flyer programme management, seamless flight search & booking and automated web check-in. TARA will officially be launched in early 2018.

Commenting on the win, Aloke Bajpai, CEO & Co-Founder, ixigo said - “We are thrilled to be the People’s Choice runner-up at Phocuswright’s Launch, the industry’s most coveted event. With TARA we move one step closer to fulfilling our vision, by providing a personalized voice-based travel assistant that is 100% AI-driven. TARA is the travel agent of the future. She is just like the travel agent of the past, except that she responds instantly and is available 24x7! She has all flight-related information and deals at her fingertips. She is unbiased and knows the traveller’s preferences by assimilating contextual awareness. TARA will ensure travellers simply focus on enjoying their trip, and leave all their travel planning hassles to us.”

Chetan Kapoor, Research Analyst - Asia Pacific, Phocuswright said, “Many Indians still favour personal touch and professional recommendations during their travel bookings. By blending these aspects with a virtual, voice-based assistant on a smartphone, ixigo’s TARA has the potential to tap millions of Indian travellers which are migrating from offline to online booking channels - and seeking a curated travel shopping and booking service.”

About ixigo

Launched in 2007, ixigo is India’s leading travel search app, connecting over 80 million travellers with content & deals from over 25,000 online & offline travel & hospitality businesses. ixigo aggregates and compares real-time travel information, prices & availability for flights, trains, buses, cabs, hotels, packages & destinations. ixigo’s mission is to simplify the lives of travellers by building apps that make their travel search and planning hassle-free and it has won several awards in its journey, including the TiE-Lumis Entrepreneurial Excellence Award and the NASSCOM Top-10 Emerge Award. ixigo’s investors include Sequoia Capital India, Fosun Kinzon Capital, SAIF Partners, MakeMyTrip & Micromax.