Town Hall Meeting-March 2012

The bi-annual Town Hall Meet (THM) of MakeMyTrip came back this nineteenth; bigger, better and louder! Like always, this THM turned out to be grander than the last one in August 2011. Instead of hunters and animals like last time, this time Trippers were in Retro and old school attires. The polka clothes, hairdos, white pants, bell bottoms and wide frames were dotted across the venue, the indo-baroque hall in Kingdom of Dreams, Gurgaon.

MMT’s own band (Gaurav Sajjanhar, Ojas Patil and Siddharth Dehl) kick-started the THM with some foot-tapping numbers from Kailash Kher to Elvis Presley. Next, MMT’s own Rapper E-Raize (Ekesh Tewari) rocked the stage with another singer (Tilak Prakash), as the duo wittily reprised the song Maeri from Euphoria.

Showstoppers- Rapper and Singer DThen our Founders Deep, Keyur and Rajesh spoke in their unique and captivating styles. Analogy between business & cricket, a story called 'My car doesn't like Vanilla ice-cream’ and exciting business figures aren’t something you hear every other day, do you? The sound health of the company, the recent partnerships across the world, the upcoming incentives for the employees and the importance of their happiness were on the agendas of L-Team members. For the first time in a THM, we had some very special guests, the family members of MMT employees.

Every THM, a reputed industry figure comes as a speaker and interacts with trippers on just about everything. The speaker this time was a dear friend of Deep, Mr. Shailesh Rao - Vice President International Operations at Twitter. Shailesh has worked as MD - Google India - and Director - Local Search - at Google’s headquarters. This young and candid (he donned a yellow retro wig!) leader mesmerised trippers with his simple fundamentals on following your passions, loving what you do and his stories at Google.Mr. Shailesh Rao interacting with Trippers

Hey wait, the best is yet to come. And that is performances by the new joiners.  Like each time, the new trippers rocked the stage with some awesome plays and comic acts. Alternate versions of characters like jury of Roadies, Siddhu Paaji, Basanti and Veeru came alive on stage, leaving a rib-tickled audience. In what seemed a duel between comedy and entertainment, some delighting dance sequences and a Tabla session also enthralled everyone in the hall. This was followed by a brown bag session where Deep and Purva (our new HR Head) answered questions on performance management, appraisals, strategic partnerships and another upcoming offsite.

THM is also a platform to acknowledge and award the best performing trippers, which we fondly know as ‘Star Performers’. Apart from the big batch of achievers, this time there was a special award category: Awards for employees working for a) FIVE and b) TEN years with MakeMyTrip. That wasn’t really unfathomable for a 12 year young dotcom that listed on NASDAQ and ranked amongst top 3 in Great Places To Work survey, twice!

Star Performers with their TrophiesThe glamorous red-carpet show ended perfectly with free food for trippers in the famed Culture Gully of Kingdom of Dreams. We devoured Lucknowi kebabs, Hyderabadi biryani, Goan curry, Mumbai vada-paos, Amritsari kulchey, and delicacies from every Indian state. With the unspent money in our cards, we indulged in some retail therapy.

An account of this THM will be incomplete without applauding our HR team for their flawless planning and execution of the event. The most exciting part of the THM is that it comes back!