Yatra’s First International Expansion Looks Nothing Like Its OTA Competitors

Key Points

• Yatra is pursuing a SaaS, tech-licensing expansion model—pairing its platform with an established regional partner—rather than building a consumer OTA brand abroad as MakeMyTrip and EaseMyTrip have done.
• The seven-year deal required significant localization, including Gulf VAT compliance, Saudi ZATCA e-invoicing, and region-specific hotel, airline, and ground-transport supplier integrations, plus an India-based 24/7 multilingual operations center.
• Gupta frames the Kanoo partnership as a repeatable blueprint for entering new markets, but says the next 12 months of adoption across Kanoo's customer base will determine how aggressively Yatra scales further.

Summary

India's Yatra Online has launched its first major international expansion through a seven-year SaaS partnership with Bahrain-based Kanoo Travel, licensing its corporate travel platform to power travel management across the Gulf region. Rather than building a consumer brand abroad like rivals MakeMyTrip and EaseMyTrip, Yatra is exporting enterprise software and standing up a round-the-clock multilingual global operations center in India to run back-office customer service for Kanoo's corporate clients. To make the deal work, Yatra localized its platform for Gulf VAT structures, Saudi Arabia's mandatory ZATCA e-invoicing standard, and regional supplier integrations. The partnership leverages Kanoo's 100+ offices and 500+ consultants across Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Oman, and Egypt, giving Yatra software licensing revenue without the cost of building a customer base from scratch. CEO Siddhartha Gupta positions this as a replicable model for future market entry, driven by strong Gulf infrastructure and tourism investment and the region's ongoing shift away from manual travel and expense processes.