In 2021, home-sharing company Airbnb, which had disrupted the travel sector with a radically innovative offering when it launched in 2008, had posted losses of $352 million, beaten and bruised by the pandemic. In 2022, it recorded a profit of $1.9 billion and a net income of $8.4 billion — a turnaround that amazed everyone. The Nasdaq-listed large cap, that IPO-ed at $68 per share in December 2020, is trading at a healthy $128.68 (though it’s a fall from its high of $219.94 in Feb 2021) and showing signs of a big rebound, despite projecting a gloomy outlook for this quarter during its recent earnings call.
Amanpreet Singh Bajaj, who leads Airbnb’s India, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan business, says it has been quite a turnaround journey between the start of the pandemic and now in India as well. “In 2020, our business went down by 90 per cent with planes grounded, no movement. But as things eased up, the use case for Airbnb enhanced,” he says.
All the changes brought about by the pandemic benefitted Airbnb, be it the work from home trend, the subsequent switch to a hybrid mode of working, the rise of conscious travel, solo travel, or the growth in domestic travel. The work from home trend resulted in people booking long stays at scenic Airbnb homes, where they could work out of. “Twenty per cent of our business today comes from long stay guests — defined as those staying 30 days or more at one property,” he says. The current hybrid working trend too benefits Airbnb, he points out, as many people who left metro centres to work remotely from their tier 2 or 3 hometowns, come to their city office once a week and stay in an Airbnb.
Domestic nights grew by 110 per cent this year, he says. At the same time, outbound travel nights in Q1 this year has doubled as compared to Q1 last year with a lot of Indians taking small breaks to Bali and other places in South East Asia.
Bajaj, who describes how Airbnb has crossed 6 million listings globally, and recorded 1.4 billion guest arrivals across the 220 countries it is present in, talks passionately about how the company is opening doors of opportunity for micro entrepreneurs in India as it onboards more and more hosts. “If you look at hosting as an activity, there are a lot of benefits. You are using underutilised assets to get an assured income. Three out of 10 people on our platform say Airbnb is their primary income, while for four out of 10 it is secondary income,” he says.
He points out how thanks to Airbnb homes, tourism dollars is now percolating down to non-touristy neighbourhoods, benefitting the micro economy of the place (restaurants, cleaners, laundry folk and other services)
Social impact
But beyond the monetary impact, he says, is the social impact. “A lot of our hosts are empty nesters — they don’t want the money, but want some company.” And the best part is they can let out the space for a week, ten days or even a day. “Economic gains, social connection and flexibility are the reasons why people host on Airbnb” he says, describing how the company is now investing in massive capacity building, skilling hosts, especially women from all backgrounds. Recently it has tied up with SHEROES to skill 57,000 women. It has multiple partnerships with SEWA in Gujarat and Leh to train village women to become hosts.
Bajaj himself is gearing up to play host next month when his new place in Gurgaon gets ready. He says many of Airbnb’s leadership team are hosts and all employees are encouraged to play host as well as stay at places listed on the platform. “We give our employees an allowance to stay at Airbnb homes as that also gives them insights,” he says. When founder Brian Chesky initially opened his home to visitors attending a design conference in San Francisco, which led to the idea of Airbnb, it was an Indian, Amol Surve, who was the first guest. “Talking to Amol, we get a sense of how Chesky made his guest feel belonged,” says Bajaj.
The Airbnb office in Gurgaon is designed in a way to inspire travel. The conference rooms are named after cities! There are rooms from Airbnb homes recreated in the sprawling office that originally was a warehouse. The canteen has a tractor and other quirky objects. We collect our lunch and repair to a room called Kuala Lumpur. The fare varies daily, says Bajaj. On the menu today is south Indian fare, uthappam, lemon rice, sambar and salad. There is a vast choice of beverages too. We opt for coconut water.
Early years
The 42-year-old Bajaj is a singularly well-travelled person. There was a time when he spent 200 nights in a year in a hotel bed abroad across some 25-30 countries. That was during his consulting days in EY. Bajaj is also an exceptionally focussed person, who has undertaken every journey — be it life or career — with a clear goal in mind.
For instance, the Indore-born Bajaj, who grew up in Gujarat initially — his dad owned a logistics business there — and subsequently completed his studies in Delhi, says from the beginning he was clear he would concentrate on academics. “Although I came from a business family, I was inspired by my sister who joined medical school when I was in Grade 1,” says Bajaj. He says he was the youngest of three siblings and there was an 11-year gap with his sister.
He did his bachelors in Information Technology from Delhi between 1999 and 2003. “While I was introduced to the magical world of bits and bytes, it was clear to me in the first few years that I was not cut out for coding. But the internet totally fascinated me.” So much so that he, along with a few college mates, started a youth portal called YankeeDelhi.com (the name was sourced through a poll) that showcased things of interest to the young in Delhi. “Our revenue model was search driven — if people would search on our platform, Google would pay us a few cents. That venture taught me how to build something from scratch, and how to build communities,” says Bajaj.
After college he joined Amex, but very soon decided that an MBA was necessary. “I sat for the CAT and opted for IMI in Delhi. It was not a top-rung B-school so from the beginning I was aware that the summer internship would be crucial.” The IMI campus was very near the EY office and Bajaj made up his mind that he wanted to join that firm only. “When EY came for summer placements to our institute, I worked hard to present the best possible version of myself to them and got selected,” he recalls.
At EY too, Bajaj worked exceedingly hard and invested in continuous learning — two traits he says has stayed with him - and once he completed his MBA was offered a job in the risk advisory practice. “I worked six years in EY and rose from a consultant to a manager and was on track to become a partner,” says Bajaj. In the first year at the firm, he was put on a project designing and developing an IT solution for a client. The product was a success and his pleased manager asked him how he could be rewarded. Bajaj’s instant response was that he wanted an international assignment. Thus, year 2 to year 6 in EY were spent globe-trotting. Those years gave him an understanding of different cultures, and also influenced his subsequent career moves.
Seed of an idea
In 2009, he was sitting in a client’s office in the US, when he saw the mail coming in — a lot of cartons from Amazon. “I thought to myself why can’t we have something like this in India. That was the genesis of me wanting to be in the ecommerce scene in India. “When he returned, he connected with Hitesh Dhingra, his old college mate with whom he had run the Delhi youth portal, and who had just founded LetsBuy.com, a pioneering ecommerce company. Dhingra asked Bajaj to join the company as co-founder. In those days, Flipkart was only selling books and Amazon had not yet come into India. LetsBuy decided to tap into the growing market for 3Cs - computers, consumer electronics and communications — and sell these online. “We were selling anything that worked on a battery or electrical connection. Those days there were no EVs — otherwise we might have sold those too,” says Bajaj with a laugh.
LetsBuy grew at a phenomenal speed, getting funding from the likes of Helion, Accel and Tiger Global. “We were literally hiring one person a day and became a 400 people start-up in just a year-and-a-half,” says Bajaj. In 2012, it was acquired by Flipkart. “It was a good outcome for everybody. Many of the employees are senior VPs now in Flipkart. I cherish the fact that we built the company as well as the category from scratch,” says Bajaj, who stayed on six months after the acquisition. While Dhingra went on to found more start-ups (Truly Madly and The Man Company), Bajaj then took a longish break deciding what to do next. “Also, I was exhausted,” he says.
After much deliberation, he zeroed in on the sharing economy, which was the big buzzword then, with Airbnb and Uber taking off in the US. “I thought if I could be one of those people who could bring the sharing economy to life in India, that would be very cool,” says Bajaj. He met with the Airbnb founders in Singapore and in 2015, he signed up as country manager India for Airbnb, which had not officially entered the country but had an organic presence. “There were nearly 20,000 or so listings then,” he says. Bajaj set up the structure, policy, legal, marketing and so on for the company. Ask him how many listings there are today, and he says they don’t share that figure. “We have grown into a 1,000-people team in India,” he says.
Airbnb India now acts as a capability extension centre for global operations. “We do community support, analytics support, accounting support, hosting operations and payments support,” says Bajaj. In Bangalore an R&D centre has opened that focuses on tech innovations.
Bajaj is gung-ho about the new features updates released by Airbnb this May that he says will benefit not only the traveller but the hosts. He is also excited about Airbnb Rooms that has been recently introduced — wherein the guest stays with the host. The rooms are cheaper, and goes back to the original premise of fostering connections. The guest can choose a host based on shared hobbies and interests- for instance, a foodie could stay with a chef.
As we wind down, you ask Bajaj which is his personal favourite on the Airbnb platform and he says on top of his list is a mud house at Munnar, and a bamboo house in Bali. The most wishlisted property in India, you learn, is a treehouse in Jibhi, Himachal Pradesh. Airbnb certainly has homed in on an exciting space.