Goibibo co-founder and CTO Vikalp Sahni quits

Co-founder and chief technical officer (CTO) of Goibibo group, Vikalp Sahni has put in his papers after serving 13 years at the online travel e-commerce firm.

While Sahni did not reveal the actual reason for the resignation on his Twitter post, sources aware of the development said that he might start his own venture in future.

Started his career with a senior software engineer at ibibo, Sahni led the technical team for the group and helped in launching the company’s mobile-first product via Android app. Sahni was also a part of Go-MMT volunteers A-class team that helped in building the government-owned Covid-19 contact tracing app Aarogya Setu.

During his long tenure, Naspers and Tencent-backed ibibo had acquired online bus aggregator redBus for $110 million in 2014. Two years later, MakeMyTrip had acquired GoIbibo in a major consolidation in the online travel segment. The deal was pegged at around $1.8 billion.

This is the second top-level exit from the Goibibo after Ashish Kashyap, who led the Goibibo Group, had left the company after 11 months of its merger with the Ctrip-backed company. He launched his venture INDWealth that manages personal wealth management. 

Sahni's resignation comes at a time when the travel industry is going through a tough time as the government has put restrictions on travel due to Covid-19 pandemic. During the lockdown MakeMyTrip had to go for significant pay cuts and layoffs as its business was severely hit due to the pandemic.

Other startups in the travel industry also faced similar challenges, including TravelTriangle and ixigo. While ixigo only announced salary cuts for its employees for the three months (April-June), TravelTriangle had to let go of 60-70% of its workforce during and after the lockdown. The SAIF Partners-backed firm was also in the news over the resignation of its top-level executives.