MakeMyTrip Limited

Hello, everyone. I'm Jonathan Huang, Vice President of Investor Relations at MakeMyTrip Limited, and welcome to our fiscal year 2022 first quarter earnings webinar. Today's event will be hosted by Deep Kalra, our company's founder and group executive chairman. Joining him is Roger Mago, our co-founder and group chief executive officer, and Mohit Khabra, our group chief financial officer. As a reminder, this live event is being recorded by the company and will be made available for replay on our IR website shortly after the conclusion of today's event. At the end of these prepared remarks, we will be hosting a Q&A session. Furthermore, certain statements made during today's event may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provision of the US Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, are subject to inherent uncertainty, and actual results may differ materially. Any forward-looking information related on this event speaks only as of this date, and the company undertakes no obligation to update information to reflect changed circumstances. Additional information concerning these statements are contained in the risk factors and forward-looking statements section of the company's annual report on Form 20F, filed with the SEC on July 3, 2021. Copies of these filings are available from the SEC or for the company's investor relations department. I'd like to now turn the call over to Deep to begin today's webinar.

Thank you, Jonathan.

Welcome, everyone, to our first quarter earnings call for the new fiscal year. I would like to start by wishing all our listeners good health as the world continues to manage through the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. As shared on our previous call in late May, India was hit by a massive second wave of new infections during the reported quarter. Second wave started in late March 21 and peaked in early May with more than 400,000 new cases a day. The situation, fortunately, has significantly improved over the last month or so, with weekly average infections now trending at about 40,000 new cases a day in two weeks. While this number is still high in absolute terms, it's only roughly a tenth of the peak rate seen in the reported quota. More encouragingly, the percentage of our population partly or fully vaccinated has also doubled since early May. Today, more than a quarter of the country, or over 346 million plus people, have been partially vaccinated, and over 95 million people are now fully vaccinated. This has significantly helped lower the seven-day average of daily recorded deaths to less than 1,000 per day, down from a peak of nearly 4,200 per day in late May. Recently, our central government has ordered another 600 million vaccine doses and is targeting to have 940 million plus adults vaccinated by the end of this calendar year. While social distancing, masking, and restrictions on movement during the second wave has helped to bring down new daily infections, we believe once more of the population gets vaccinated, life and travel would gradually return to normal as exemplified by the experience of countries with high vaccination rates. While the disruptions from the pandemic have been unprecedented, it has accelerated the shift towards online shopping across India during the last few quarters as e-commerce users has reached over $250 million so far. According to a report published by WorldPayFIS, the e-commerce industry has substantial room for further growth and can reach over $110 billion by 2024. Though the travel industry has been significantly dented by the pandemic, our long-term view is that the inherent need of people to experience the world and travel hasn't changed. Our views are being validated by the pent-up demand seen within the leisure segment as restrictions are lifted. We witnessed this demand after the first wave's impact ended and are likely to see a similar pattern play out as the recovery from the second wave continues to unfold. It's fair to say that our operating results this past quarter fared far better than the same quarter a year ago when our entire nation was forced to shut down in April and May of 2020. Helping to further the industry's hope for a faster recovery is clearly ongoing vaccinations, sensible and targeted movement restrictions, and higher lockdown fatigue that would drive travel demand going forward. In anticipation of recovery post the second wave, the Ministry of Civil Aviation has also increased airlines' flown capacity to 65%, which hopefully should continue to ramp up as the demand situation improves. Similarly, More than 90% of chain hotels and over 80% of top independent hotels are now fully open for bookings. Lastly, during the second wave, we were fortunate enough to have an established pandemic playbook to help us weather through the current bout of virus-induced volatility with minimal operating cash burn during a highly challenging operating environment in the reported quarter. The good news is that we believe that the worst of the second wave may be behind us. evidenced by the improving week-on-week travel demand seen across our business since early July. With increased vaccination rates, we believe that domestic travel demand will continue to recover in the coming months and online users will use the Make My Trip group of brands to plan and book their much-needed and desired post-pandemic trips. We're also encouraged to see our governments recently announce support for the travel industry by providing financial assistance to multiple tourism stakeholders in the form of working capital and personal loans. Furthermore, the European Union has also recently accepted the use of Indian-made vaccines for travel to 16 countries within the region as part of the Green Pass program. Countries allowing fully vaccinated Indian travelers to forego quarantine requirements include France, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Iceland, and 11 more. We anticipate over time more countries will once again open its borders to our travelers, which will help us gradually recover bookings for outbound travel services. With that, I'd like to hand the call over to Rajesh to share some more color on our fiscal first quarter.