Product Teardown

Ixigo Product Makeover

Improving retention & differentiation for 80M+ MAU platform

Product Teardown

IIT Guwahati

Problem Context

Ixigo is one of India’s fastest-growing online travel platforms with strong traction in Tier 2/3 cities. Despite high monthly active users, the platform struggles with retention and lacks strong product differentiation in a highly competitive OTA market.
Users face poor refund experiences, weak personalization, and no emergency travel optimization. This leads to low trust, high churn, and users frequently switching to competitors offering better experience or pricing.

Segmented users into key personas: budget travelers, urgent travelers, and family travelers
Mapped user pain points to product gaps across booking, support, and planning
Analyzed industry gaps like lack of emergency routing and budget-first planning
Designed a feature-first product strategy targeting high-intent user scenarios

TripMate: Smart budget-based trip planner with live expense tracking and group splitting
RapidRoute: Emergency multi-modal routing system optimizing for real arrival time
TARA 2.0: AI-powered assistant for instant support, personalization, and trust building

Improved user retention by addressing critical pain points like refunds and planning
Increased engagement through personalized and use-case driven features
Reduced dependency on manual customer support via AI automation
Created strong product differentiation in a crowded OTA market

Trust and reliability are core product features, not just support functions
Differentiation comes from solving high-intent user problems, not adding features
User experience in critical moments (refunds, urgency) drives retention
Simple, focused solutions outperform feature-heavy products

Deliverable