Tiket.com CMO Tells Survival Strategy During a Pandemic: We Cut Everyone Except Employees

As a pioneer of OTA in Indonesia, Tiket.com is still consistently deepening their services, namely accommodation and travel tickets. Although currently there are several additional services, the company chooses to focus on core business The.

In the event session "TechinAsia Conference 2022", Co-Founder & CMO of Tiket.com Gaery Undarsa said, after providing services to the Indonesian people for 11 years, now is the right time for the company to bounce back, after the pandemic disrupted business growth for the last two years.

No layoffs

This year the company also claims to have experienced record breaking growth, with the recovery of tourism activities in the country. From the start, the company still believed that tourism activities would eventually recover, even though it had experienced a drastic decline during the pandemic.

"The pandemic has hit the travel industry the most, within 2 years no one wants to travel. We still believe in this industry and travel is essential. We realize that there is a big opportunity, because during a crisis there is usually a big button which is called reset, said Gaery.

Even though the pandemic has disrupted their business, they haven't laid off a single employee. It said the company still holds the belief that employees are the biggest investment and supporting factor for the company.

Gaery said this decision was certainly the most difficult thing for the company to do, when other companies offering similar services carried out massive layoffs. However, this has never happened at Tiket.com during the pandemic to date.

"It's not an easy thing for us, we cut all but employees. We trust them. After conditions start to return to normal, we can retain the best talent, employee confidence in the company is also higher and we are also still recruiting," said Gaery.

Currently Tiket.com already has around 1200 employees. Various strategies were launched by the company to be able to survive when conditions were difficult. Among them is starting to diversify the business into travel support products (non-essential).

Train staycation which spread throughout the pandemic, is also one of the supporting factors behind this achievement. The highest growth also came from TO DO holiday activity ticket sales, which jumped by 10.083% compared to the same period in the previous year. Then, in terms of users, it increased by 299% or almost 3x.

According to Gaery, the pandemic is the right time for companies to be able to see new opportunities and how companies can take advantage of existing opportunities, even in difficult conditions.

"When times are tough, look at the opportunities that exist, especially when building a business for the long term," Gaery said.

IPO plan

Mentioned about IPO plan Tiket.com, Gaery declined to comment. Previously, it was reported that the company would conduct an IPO on the New York stock exchange through SPAC. The company is in discussions with COVA Acquisition Corp. (COVA), with an estimated combined company value of $2 billion.

Last year 2021 the company also had the status of unicorn. Tiket.com's current focus is on being able to recover quickly and return to being a superior OTA service player by providing relevant services and products to users.

Tiket.com was founded in 2011 and acquired by Djarum Group through Blibli in 2017. Currently, both are still operating with separate legal entities (PT), so it is possible for Tiket.com to conduct an IPO first.

The founders of Tiket.com include Mikhael Gaery Undarsa (CMO), Wenas Agusetiawan, Dimas Surya Yaputra (CCO), and Natali Ardianto (CTO - already exit). George Hendrata is currently the company's CEO.