Consumer-facing AI agent apps have moved from answering travel questions to completing bookings on behalf of users, and online travel aggregator ixigo plans to profit from that shift rather than lose customers to it. In its Q2 FY27 earnings release, ixigo’s management said every shift in how people book travel — from desktop to mobile and now AI agents — has “created opportunities for companies willing to adapt”. The company is therefore building its own agentic layer
Why this matters: At the Global Fintech Fest 2026, Amazon Pay launched Smart Wallet, which lets AI agents make UPI payments on a user’s behalf with consent, within specified spending limits.
Agentic payments went live first for flight bookings, with ixigo as a launch partner alongside NPCI.
ixigo’s competitors are also increasingly adopting AI. MakeMyTrip’s AI agent Myra now enables conversational bookings. Expedia and Booking.com were the first travel brands inside ChatGPT. Expedia has also partnered with Perplexity’s Comet browser.
What risks does AI pose for online travel aggregators?
ixigo did not downplay the AI threat. The management warned that every time a user leaves an app to ask an external AI agent for help, “that app risks losing engagement, context and eventually distribution”.
However, ixigo argues that India is harder terrain for general-purpose agents. Online bookings accounted for about 42.5% of India’s total travel gross booking value in FY26. Bus supply spans 7,000-plus private operators and 25-plus state transport corporations.
Trains are governed via a regulatory framework. Trains and buses account for over 70% of ixigo’s contribution margin. In comparison, 94% of its transactions involve travellers from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, for whom post-booking service, including refunds, waitlist prediction and disruption handling, is where trust is won.
“An agent that only issues a ticket does not own any of that,” management said.
What is ixigo’s strategy to navigate the AI shift?
ixigo plans to operate on both sides of the shift — as a supply and fulfilment partner inside third-party agents, while offering its own agentic experience via ixigo NEXT, a voice-first layer built on small language models developed in-house.
TARA, its AI assistant, already resolves 94% of chat queries and handles 82% of customer calls end-to-end.
With models commoditising, management said the advantage lies in “proprietary context, workflows, memory, prediction and closing the loop between intelligence and execution”. Over time, “the strongest moat will be organisational adaptability.”
The caveats
AI agents could initially direct bookings towards platforms that are “most cited and easiest to transact with” — potentially favouring larger brands.
The economics of agent-driven bookings remain unproven. AI also requires investment. ixigo’s technology spend rose 46% year-on-year to Rs 14.3 crore in Q2 FY27, while adjusted EBITDA fell 17% to Rs 23.6 crore. Management warned that benefits will “build over time rather than appear in any single quarter.”
Also read:
- ixigo swings to Rs 63 crore profit in Q2 on Freshbus stake sale
- ixigo bets on voice payments, but RBI rules still require human authentication
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