TravTalk India Online Magazine
The travel booking platform is actively seeking technology talent in India due to the abundance of high-scale, highperformance engineering solutions. With a focus on technology innovation, Agoda is experimenting with artificial intelligence and consumer fintech options to provide customers with the best possible experience.
Janice Alyosius
With innovation in mind, Agoda has been actively seeking technical talent in India, as the country has highly skilled individuals, said Idan Zalzberg, CTO, Agoda. “India’s proximity to Bangkok and Singapore, where Agoda has offices, is also a key factor for the brand to target the India market. This allows for easy collaboration and mobility among teams, and many Indian employees appreciate the opportunity to work for a company with a strong presence in the region,” he said.
Highlighting the reasons for Agoda’s interest in hiring Indian developers, is the abundance of high-scale, high-performance engineering solutions in India. “These developers are well-equipped to handle the challenges of building efficient, fast-moving solutions at scale. Additionally, the hunger to learn and grow among Indian employees is highly valued by Agoda, as the company has a culture of moving fast and getting things done,” Zalzberg said.
In terms of opportunities for technology innovation, India is a market with a high rate of online penetration, second only to China in terms of travel. This makes India a prime location for early adoption of new technologies, he shared.
Agoda considers itself a tech company first, with the goal of becoming the world’s largest travel company by prioritizing technology investments that support this vision, shared Zalzberg. “Our ability to efficiently scale while remaining agile is a key component of our success, driven by our culture and technology. In addition to enabling our own business, we have also begun creating new business opportunities through technology, such as white-labelling our platform and services for other companies to use. This has led to partnerships with companies like Paytm and providing complete OTA solutions for companies like JTB and others in the US,” he said.
Impact of technology
Speaking of the impact of technology on the company’s business, Zalzberg said, “Agoda’s business is heavily driven by technology and there are several innovations that have made a significant impact on the company’s success. One example is the experimentation platform that is used to make decisions related to marketing and other aspects of the business. With over 1,000 experiments running at any given time, customers are often participating in around 70-80 experiments per session without even realizing it. Another important aspect of Agoda’s success is its ability to scale efficiently. The company performs tens of billions of searches every day, which requires a lot of ingesting and delivering data in large quantities. Agoda has built its own stack and data centres from scratch, using open source technology like Kubernetes to ensure efficiency and provide customers with the best experience possible.”
Agoda also has a large data platform and data science team that helps the company create interesting programs for partners, particularly smaller and independent hotel owners who may not have the resources to reach customers on their own. Agoda’s programs provide these hotel owners with visibility into their data and allow them to target and market their services to potential customers. Overall, these innovations have helped Agoda become a successful tech company that is focused on providing its customers with the best possible experience.
New products
Revealing the launch if new products, Zalzberg shared, “Agoda started as an accommodation company and has now evolved into a travel company. We have seen significant growth in our flight and attraction offerings, and this year we plan to add airport transfers to our portfolio. Our ultimate goal is to combine these offerings to provide customers with even better deals. We are also exploring consumer fintech options such as smart refunds, cancel and rebook, and price freeze to ensure customers receive the best deals possible. Additionally, we are experimenting with generative AI to enhance the customer experience and improve our operational efficiency. These are still in the development phase but we have some promising ideas.”
Currently, the travel industry in India is experiencing a tremendous boom. There has been significant growth in domestic travel, and the value of outbound Indian travellers is expected to increase by double digits in the next few years. Additionally, India has the potential to attract more inbound travellers.
