Can Coupons Lift MakeMyTrip Bookings 10% Without Hurting Profit?
Company: Microsoft
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product / Decision Making
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
Imagine you are the chief marketing officer of MakeMyTrip, the Indian online travel company that sells flights, hotels, holiday packages, and bus and train tickets. You are asked to grow the number of bookings by 10% through coupons. Can that target be reached this way, and what would a coupon program of that size do to the company's bottom line? Finish with a recommendation.
```hint Look past the redemption count
A booking that uses a coupon is not necessarily a booking the coupon created. Compare the discount with what MakeMyTrip keeps from each booking, not with the price the traveler pays.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Over what period should the 10% be delivered, and against which baseline: last year's bookings or a forecast that already includes expected growth?
- Does "bookings" mean transactions or gross booking value, and does the target cover every line of business (flights, hotels, holiday packages, buses, trains) or only some of them?
- Is the bottom line judged on profit within the program period, or is a short-term loss acceptable if the coupons bring in customers who keep booking afterward?
- Can partners such as hotels, airlines or card-issuing banks share the cost of the discounts, or does MakeMyTrip pay for all of it?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- Pinning down the target (unit, period, baseline, lines of business) before judging whether it is achievable.
- Booking-level economics: the margin MakeMyTrip earns by line of business compared with the coupon's cost, and the difference between coupon redemptions and bookings that would not otherwise happen.
- A coupon design (who receives it, how much, on which products, funded by whom) aimed at new demand, ending in a clear recommendation with conditions.
- Short- and long-term profit effects, including margin dilution, repeat bookings from new customers, coupon dependence, abuse and competitor responses.
- A way to measure the true incremental effect, and the guardrails that would decide whether to stop or scale the program.
### Follow-up Questions
- The program lifts bookings by 12%, but contribution margin falls. How do you decide whether to keep it running?
- Which line of business would you target with coupons first, and why?
- A week after launch, a rival travel app matches your discounts and goes deeper. What do you do?
Overview: A product strategy case asking whether MakeMyTrip can raise bookings by 10% with coupons and what that would do to profit. It tests booking-level unit economics, the gap between coupon redemptions and truly new bookings, coupon targeting and funding, and how a marketing or product leader would measure the real return on discounts.