India’s largest online travel platform, MakeMyTrip, is doubling down on marketing technology, with 20–25% of its marketing budget now being spent on MarTech, according to Raj Rishi Singh, Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Business Officer at the company.

Speaking to MarTechAI.com on the sidelines of the Pitch CMO Summit 2025, Singh revealed that nearly a quarter of the company’s marketing spend is now channelled into building smarter, AI-led marketing infrastructure—including automation tools, CRM systems, personalization engines, and customer data platforms.

“We spend between 20% to 25% of our marketing budgets on MarTech. And to be honest, we would want to do more,” said Singh.

This significant investment reflects the company’s larger ambition to move beyond campaign-led marketing and toward intelligent, intent-driven consumer engagement.

The Next Frontier: Conversational Commerce for Travel

Singh also unveiled MakeMyTrip’s next big bet: a conversational, AI-powered trip planning and booking experience, built on its robust first-party data infrastructure. The company is working on a platform where users can plan and book entire itineraries through natural conversations—either via text or voice.

“We are quite invested in ensuring that we can aid our consumers with trip planning and booking on the same surface,” Singh explained.

“If you’ve been a MakeMyTrip user over the last 4–5 years—even if you didn’t book—you would have searched. That gives us strong signals… what kind of destination you go to, what kind of airfare you search for. Ideally, we would have enough first-party information to understand your persona.”

“Now, we want to build an interface where you can chat with us—or rather, with a bot—and say, ‘I’m planning a trip this summer.’ Based on that conversation, we can recommend a personalised itinerary. And then our agents step in, and you can book the entire trip on the same surface. In the very short term, we’ll be able to offer this kind of end-to-end, conversational experience.”

This plan aligns with the global rise of agentic AI—systems that can interpret user intent, make decisions, and take actions across complex workflows. For MakeMyTrip, it means reducing the friction between inspiration and booking, by removing the need for users to toggle between apps, tabs, or endless filters.

What’s Next

With consumer journeys becoming more hybrid, and cookie-based targeting on its way out, Singh’s push toward first-party data, AI-led personalization, and conversational UX marks a strategic pivot for MakeMyTrip—from being a travel booking site to a travel concierge platform.

In doing so, it may not only transform how Indians book travel—but also set a benchmark for AI-integrated customer journeys across digital-first sectors.