India’s travel and leisure sector is undergoing a structural transformation, with the online travel ecosystem emerging as a key beneficiary of rising travel demand, digital adoption, and changing consumer preferences.

The industry has evolved significantly over the past two decades—from a fragmented, offline agent-driven market to a digitally enabled ecosystem led by online travel platforms.

The next phase of growth is expected to be driven by artificial intelligence, enabling hyper-personalized travel planning, dynamic packaging, and real-time decision-making.

The travel distribution landscape remains inherently complex due to the diversity of traveler requirements and the highly fragmented global supplier base, comprising thousands of airlines and millions of accommodation providers. This fragmentation continues to create inefficiencies across the value chain, reinforcing the importance of aggregators and digital platforms that simplify discovery, comparison, booking, and post-booking services.

Several structural tailwinds are supporting long-term growth. Rising disposable incomes, favorable demographics, increasing workforce participation, improving transportation infrastructure, and a consumer shift toward experience-led spending are expanding the addressable travel market.

Easing international travel regulations and growing connectivity are further accelerating travel demand across both domestic and international segments.
Against this backdrop, India’s online travel market is expected to outpace global growth trends. The market is projected to expand from approximately INR 2.1 trillion in FY23 to INR 3.8 trillion by FY28, reflecting a CAGR of around 13%, significantly higher than the global online travel market growth rate. Online channels are also expected to gain share, with digital penetration rising to nearly 65% of total travel bookings from about 54% currently.Scalability within the sector is increasingly determined by technological capabilities, supplier network depth, automation, customer acquisition efficiency, and the ability to cross-sell complementary travel services.

Margin expansion opportunities are also improving as platforms increase their exposure to higher-value segments such as hotels, holiday packages, meetings and events, and ancillary services.

A notable trend shaping the industry is the growing use of mergers and acquisitions to strengthen technology capabilities, expand inventory, and deepen customer engagement. This consolidation strategy mirrors global best practices and is helping travel platforms build more integrated ecosystems.

While competitive intensity, supplier dependence, macroeconomic sensitivity, and technological disruption remain key risks, the medium-term outlook remains favorable.

The combination of underpenetrated online travel adoption, expanding digital infrastructure, and AI-enabled personalization positions India’s travel technology ecosystem as a compelling long-term growth theme.

TBO Tek TP- 1765

TBO Tek delivered a resilient performance despite geopolitical disruptions across key travel corridors. Management expects travel demand to rebound as conditions normalize, supported by recovery in Middle East markets, strong momentum in Europe, increasing international travel, and ongoing integration of Classic Vacations, which should enhance scale and operating synergies. Revenue grew 83% YoY in 4QFY26, aided by the consolidation of Classic Vacations, while organic revenue increased 21% YoY. MTB grew 15% YoY, EBITDA rose 23% YoY, and PAT increased 2% YoY. For FY26, consolidated GTV grew 19% YoY, reflecting healthy underlying demand despite temporary disruptions in key travel markets. We maintain a BUY stance on TBO Tek, supported by its diversified travel platform, strong execution, and favourable industry trends. We expect revenue/EBIT/PAT CAGR of 37%/35%/30% over FY25-28E, driven by increasing contribution from high take-rate hotel and ancillary segments, international expansion, and benefits from the Classic Vacations integration.

Ixigo TP- 217

Le Travenues Technology (Ixigo) is the second-largest online travel agency (OTA) in terms of FY26 gross transaction value of INR187b, (includes flight~75b, Train:83b, Bus:26b and others:3b), with a monthly active user base of 85m largely coming from Tier-2 and Tier-3 towns. Notably, it is a market leader among OTAs in train ticketing with a market share of ~60% and is also consolidating its position in flight and bus ticketing. Ixigo’s differentiated multi-app, multi-brand strategy has enabled it to strengthen consumer engagement at a structurally lower customer acquisition cost. Its user base is widely distributed across lower-tier markets, with ~94% of bookings having either origin or destination in non-tier-1 cities, highlighting strong penetration beyond metro markets. We estimate Ixigo to deliver a CAGR of ~23%/59%/51% in revenue/EBITDA/PAT and grow its overall GTV by 22% during FY26-28E and EBITDA margin is expected to improve by 400bp to 10% by FY28E on the back of operating leverage and potential reductions in operating expenses.

(The author is Siddhartha Khemka, Head – Research, Wealth Management, Motilal Oswal Financial Services Ltd.)

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views, and opinions given by experts are their own. These do not represent the views of the Economic Times)

India’s information technology sector, a 30-year wealth engine for the country, is at crossroads. A brutal sell-off triggered by weak global cues, Accenture‘s cautious commentary, and broader anxiety about AI disruption has left investors scrambling for answers. For Daljeet Kohli, an independent market expert, the answer is simple, stay out.

“The jury is still out”: Why Kohli has zero IT exposure

Kohli has held a bearish view on the sector for several months and is not softening his stance. His core concern is not that Indian IT companies will disappear, he is clear they won’t, but the sector’s defining characteristic, growth, is missing. “My style of investment is basically growth and that is going to be missing here,” he told ET Now, adding that the exaggerated market reaction to every piece of weak data signals how deeply investors distrust the sector’s near-term trajectory.
The Accenture numbers, which spooked the market, were not catastrophic in isolation. But Kohli argues that the severity of the reaction reflects a deeper consensus: the growth trajectory for Indian IT majors over the next few years looks structurally challenged. While some niche players and those who successfully pivot to AI-led services may survive and thrive, he warns that identifying those winners right now is nearly impossible. “Who will survive — the jury is still out.”

“When a sector goes out of reckoning, it takes a very long time. Equity markets are all about the future, and we are very clear this sector will take very long to stabilise,” says Kohli.

Jio’s IPO: Value unlocking, not a cash crunch

Shifting to the other headline of the day, Reliance Jio’s DRHP has hit the market, a fresh issue of 27 crore shares that has reignited debate about where the proceeds will go. Kohli’s read is that this is less about raising emergency capital and more about strategic value unlocking.

Telecom is a permanently capital-hungry business, he notes, with constant technological upgradation, AI integration, app ecosystems, and a fierce two-player competition with Bharti Airtel all demand ongoing investment. But the IPO’s deeper purpose, in his view, is to give investors a clean, direct vehicle to bet on India’s telecom story without the baggage of Reliance’s oil refining and retail businesses. “If somebody wants to play only the telecom business and not the traditional businesses, then this will give an opportunity,” Kohli said.
For long-suffering Reliance shareholders who have watched the stock stagnate, the listing could be the catalyst the market has been waiting for -separating Jio’s high-growth digital narrative from the conglomerate’s legacy valuation drag.

The founders I speak to are tired. Not in a “long week” way. Tired in a way that doesn’t fix itself with a Friday off or a weekend in the Cotswolds. The phone follows them everywhere. Slack notifications onto the train. An investor email they “just need to glance at” before bed.

If you’re reading this, you probably know what I mean.

I want to talk about something that has worked for me, and a handful of founders I’ve sent the same way — a real, deliberate, off-grid founder retreat in a place that physically refuses to let you stay reachable. I’ll be honest about what it costs, where it falls down, and the parts most articles miss.

Why a spa weekend doesn’t actually work

The spa weekend is the polite version of the problem. You arrive. You meditate badly. The food is good. You check your email at 7am and 11pm because the signal is still there, and so are you.

The Harvard Business Review has been writing about executive burnout for years now, and one of the threads researchers keep returning to is that recovery requires psychological detachment — not just physical absence from work. You need an environment where the temptation is genuinely removed, not just frowned upon. Most UK spa breaks fail that test.

I tried the local route first. A long weekend in Wales. Phone in a drawer. Within forty-eight hours I’d opened it three times “just to check the weather.” The reset didn’t take.

What being properly off-grid does to your brain

The first time I genuinely lost signal was inside Masai Mara National Park in Kenya. Not by choice, exactly. The lodge had Wi-Fi at reception and that was the entire offering. You walked there. You sat down and queued.

By day three I’d stopped going to reception.

There’s a particular thing that happens when your phone stops being an option. Your brain stops the background calculation of what if someone needs me. The cortisol drops in a way it can’t drop when you’re 200 yards from a Wi-Fi router. You start sleeping properly, which is a thing most founders haven’t done in years.

The lodge I stayed at was arranged through an operator I’d researched in advance. The time saved here matters more than people realise. Look at established East African travel specialists who handle the planning end-to-end rather than trying to stitch flights, transfers, and park permits together yourself when you’re already running on fumes.

The part I wasn’t expecting

Here’s something I haven’t seen written about properly in the corporate-retreat articles.

It wasn’t the wildlife that did the work. The lions were extraordinary, the migration crossings were genuinely a sight you don’t forget — wildebeest in their hundreds piling into a brown river while the air smelled of dust and wet hide. But that’s not what reset me.

It was the silence at 4:30pm when the wind dropped, the grass stopped moving, and you could actually hear your own breathing. There is no equivalent in a London co-working space. There is no equivalent in a Cornwall holiday cottage. The sound of nothing, in a landscape that extends past the horizon in every direction, does something a meditation app can’t fake.

A friend who runs a fintech in Manchester told me the same thing, in different words, after she went the following year. “I didn’t realise how loud my life was until it stopped.”

The honest cost picture for 2026

Park fees were updated in 2026 and the payment systems are now mostly digital. Kenya Wildlife Service parks are paid through kwspay.ecitizen.go.ke before you arrive. Masai Mara uses a separate Narok County system, which catches almost everyone out the first time.

Where the entry rates sit right now for international visitors:

• Masai Mara: $100 per adult per day from January through June, $200 per adult from July through December.
• Nairobi National Park: $80 per adult per day. There is also a combined “Nairobi Package” pairing the Park with the Safari Walk and Animal Orphanage for $105 per adult — useful if you’ve a stopover day before flying onward.

A practical detail nobody mentions until you’re at the gate: Mara tickets are valid for 12 hours, not 24. KWS tickets are 24. Enter the Mara at 4pm thinking you’ve covered tomorrow morning’s drive, and you haven’t.

Entry fees are only part of the cost. A serious off-grid retreat — flights, transfers, a good lodge, a private vehicle — typically runs $4,000 to $8,000 per person for five to seven nights. There are cheaper versions and considerably more expensive ones. For a realistic sense of what a full itinerary looks like and how seasonal pricing affects the budget, it’s worth reviewing typical Mara-region trip itineraries and recommended travel windows before you brief your assistant on the booking.

Concerns founders raise

“I can’t be unreachable for a week.” This is the most common one, and it deserves a bit of pushback. If your business genuinely can’t function without you for seven days, that itself is the burnout signal — the company is too dependent on a single nervous system. Most founders who go discover the team copes. The ones who plan it well brief two deputies and set an emergency contact protocol before they leave.

“What if something goes wrong out there?” A reasonable question. Malaria is a real risk in the Mara, and a travel-medicine appointment in the UK before you fly isn’t optional. Most reputable operators have evacuation insurance built into the package, but I’d verify it rather than assume.

“Will I actually disconnect, or will I just stew on work for a week?” Honestly, the first couple of days are awkward. The mental chatter doesn’t stop because the signal does. By day three or four most people I know describe something shifting. If it doesn’t, you’ve learned something important about how much your work has colonised your inner life — and that’s information worth having.

Where I got the planning wrong

My first attempt at this, I packed it too tight. I had built an itinerary with three lodges in seven days, an internal flight transfer in the middle, and a pre-dawn balloon ride on day four. By day five I was more tired than when I’d arrived. Moving accommodation is exhausting in the Mara because the roads are rough and the days start before dawn.

The version that worked, two years later, was simpler. One lodge. Six nights. No internal flights. A guide called Patrick — a licensed safari guide with a decade in the job — suggested we skip the dawn drive on day three and have a slow morning instead. That single piece of advice did more for me than the rest of the itinerary combined.

The trade-off is real, though. You see less wildlife when you slow down. If your goal is photography or a comprehensive Big Five tick-list, the slow version isn’t for you. If your goal is to feel like yourself again, it is.

When this isn’t the right answer

Worth saying — this won’t fix a burnout that’s been building for five years. It won’t fix a co-founder relationship that’s broken. It won’t replace therapy if you actually need therapy. BMMagazine has covered why rested founders build better businesses more thoroughly than I can here, and it’s worth reading alongside this piece.

What an off-grid week can do is interrupt the pattern long enough for you to see clearly what needs changing when you come home. That’s the pitch. It’s a smaller claim than the wellness industry usually makes, and it happens to be true.

If you’re considering one, the practical advice is unromantic. Book early. Peak season (July through October) sells out at the better lodges twelve to fourteen months ahead. Brief your team months out, and build buffer days at both ends so you’re not stepping off a long-haul flight straight into a board meeting.

The rest of it — the actual reset — that part the wilderness does for you. You just have to get yourself there.

Career breaks are becoming increasingly common, especially among women who step away from work for reasons such as marriage, childcare, maternity, elder care, or personal commitments. While these breaks may be necessary, they often create a gap in retirement savings and long-term wealth creation.

The challenge becomes even bigger because retirement planning relies heavily on the power of compounding, and a few years away from investing can impact the final corpus significantly. However, financial experts believe that a career break does not have to derail retirement goals permanently. With disciplined investing, portfolio reviews, and strategic cash-flow management, investors can gradually bridge the gap and get back on track.

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A similar query came from Sona, a viewer of The Money Show on ETNow who has a gap in her retirement savings because of her career break and wants to know how she can catch up? She has mentioned that if she has gone back to the job or not or she has any source of income, can there be a solution where current investments can be invested better so that she achieves her retirement goal.

According to Harshvardhan Roongta, CEO, CFP, Roongta Securities the first step is to accept the situation rather than stress over it. He noted that career breaks are particularly common among women and often result in a temporary setback in retirement planning. Whether the break is due to marriage, maternity, or other personal reasons, many women face a similar challenge.

“Please do not be too hard on yourself. You can only do as much as you can do. This is not something only you are going through; many women face similar situations,” he said.
He believes that acknowledging the setback without guilt helps investors focus on solutions rather than dwelling on lost time. One of the most effective ways to compensate for a gap in retirement savings is to increase investments for a limited period.Roongta suggested that investors create a catch-up plan by allocating a larger portion of their income towards investments over the next six months, one year, or even two years.

“Now you need to invest a little more than what you were doing earlier. Set a target for a temporary period and be a little more aggressive with your savings,” he said. Having a clear goal can also encourage individuals to cut unnecessary expenses and channel more money towards wealth creation.

Use bonuses and extra income wisely

Another strategy is to redirect any additional income towards retirement savings. Once an individual returns to work, there may be opportunities to earn bonuses, incentives, salary hikes, or other one-time cash inflows. Instead of spending this surplus, Roongta recommends using it to fill the retirement gap.

“There could be bonuses, performance-linked incentives or other surplus cash flows. Make sure you redirect those funds towards bridging the gap in your retirement savings,” he said.

Review your portfolio

Apart from increasing contributions, investors should also assess whether their existing investments are working efficiently. Roongta suggested reviewing the portfolio to identify investments that may not be delivering adequate returns or are unlikely to contribute meaningfully towards long-term wealth creation.

For example, some low-return investments may provide stability but may not be suitable for investors trying to make up for lost time.

“Look at your existing portfolio and see whether there are ways to make it work a little harder for you. It may be time to review whether some investments can be repositioned to improve return potential,” he said.

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Don’t take excessive risk

While seeking higher returns may seem like an easy solution, Roongta cautioned against taking risks that do not align with one’s financial profile. He stressed that investors should never chase returns blindly or invest in products they do not understand simply because they offer the possibility of higher gains.

“Do not take risks just because you want higher returns. That can be a disaster. Any additional risk should fit within your risk profile,” he said. Instead, investors should take a calibrated approach and evaluate whether the potential return justifies the additional risk being taken.

Roongta also recommends periodically reviewing the strategy after implementing changes. After a few months of higher investments and portfolio adjustments, investors can assess whether the revised approach is helping them move closer to their retirement goals. If the strategy is not working as expected, they can make further adjustments or revert to their original plan.

“The key is to maintain discipline and keep increasing investments whenever possible,” he said.

A career break may delay retirement planning, but it does not have to permanently derail financial independence. Experts suggest focusing on higher savings, making the most of additional income, reviewing existing investments, and maintaining realistic expectations. Most importantly, investors should avoid comparing themselves with others and remain committed to long-term financial discipline.

For those returning to work after a break, a well-thought-out catch-up strategy can go a long way in rebuilding retirement savings and securing their financial future.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times)

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