Yatra Online has appointed Malay Kant Ghorai as Chief Experience Officer, reinforcing its leadership bench at a pivotal moment in the company’s growth trajectory. The appointment signals a deliberate push to sharpen service delivery and client experience as the company accelerates its enterprise travel ambitions.
Ghorai brings over two decades of experience spanning customer experience design, operations leadership, business transformation and delivery excellence. His mandate at Yatra will focus on enhancing service quality, improving operational efficiency and building more seamless experiences for the company’s growing base of enterprise clients and channel partners.
Most recently, Ghorai served at Mercer as Senior Director – Global Operational Excellence, Automation and AI, where he led enterprise-wide transformation programmes anchored in analytics, automation, Lean and Six Sigma methodologies. He also held the role of Executive Vice President – Operations, CX, Strategic Partnerships and Delivery Excellence, extending his remit across client-facing and operational domains at the global consultancy.
Prior to Mercer, Ghorai spent over three years at Mettl – now part of the Mercer group – as Principal and Vice President, where he led customer experience, core operations and strategic growth across the skills, education and government verticals. During that tenure, he drove measurable improvements in customer satisfaction, reduced operational costs and expanded the business through digital transformation and process optimisation.
His broader career includes leadership roles at Wipro, where he served as Director and Group Manager overseeing client delivery and talent transitions; Alight Solutions; Aon; IBM; WNS Global Services; and iGATE Global Solutions. Across these organisations, he built deep expertise in quality transformation, automation, client relationship management and operational excellence – with a particular track record in HRO, benefits administration, telecom and travel and leisure verticals.
Ghorai is an alumnus of Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies and Annamalai University, and holds recognised qualifications in Lean Six Sigma methodology.
The appointment comes at a high-water mark for Yatra. The company reported its most profitable year on record in FY26, with revenue growth of 27.2%, EBITDA growth of 53.2% and PAT growth of 28.1%, despite significant macro headwinds that affected three quarters of the financial year. Gross margin grew 24.5% year-on-year to INR 4,824 million – ahead of revised guidance – underscoring the structural improvement in Yatra’s business model.
Central to that improvement has been the aggressive scaling of Yatra’s corporate travel division. During FY26, the company added 163 new corporate customers with an annual billable value of approximately INR 9,568 million, up from 148 customers worth INR 7,475 million in FY25. The company now serves over 1,300 corporate clients, with the B2E segment operating as the primary growth engine. Yatra is also expanding its footprint in the MICE segment – meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions – and has positioned itself as a dominant player in that market within a relatively short period.
Ghorai’s arrival is strategically timed to address the service complexity that comes with rapid enterprise expansion. As Yatra onboards more corporate clients and deepens its technology stack – including the Recap expense management platform and AI-driven booking capabilities – the quality of client-facing operations becomes a critical competitive differentiator. A Chief Experience Officer role had not previously been part of Yatra’s public leadership structure, suggesting this is a newly created function designed to hold enterprise experience accountable at the C-suite level.
In announcing the appointment, Yatra noted that Ghorai’s focus on operational agility and customer-centric transformation would be central to enhancing the company’s service delivery architecture. His background sits squarely at the intersection of operational rigour and client experience – a combination that aligns directly with Yatra’s stated medium-term goals of 20% gross margin growth and 30% adjusted EBITDA growth.
Founded in 2006, Yatra Online is India’s largest corporate travel services provider and the third largest online travel company in the country. The company operates across air, hotels, packages and MICE, serving both leisure and business segments through digital platforms, mobile applications and its corporate SaaS offering. It is listed on both the BSE and NSE.
