Cleartrip appoints Indroneel Dutt as CFO & Ankit Rastogi as VP

Cleartrip has recently announced the appointment of Indroneel Dutt and Ankit Rastogi as its CFO and Vice President - Hotels, respectively. Indroneel will be based in Mumbai and will focus on optimising cost efficiencies and revenue streams for more resilient operations, where as Ankit will spearhead the brand's hotel-based business out of Bangalore with a view of creating a more robust foundation of its core business.

Indroneel comes equipped with an in-depth knowledge of key business aspects such as finance, private equity, and investment banking.

Ankit, on the other hand, is an expert in the Indian hospitality and accommodation sector. He founded IndiaHotelReview in 2006 as a budget OTA targeting the Tier-II markets.

"We are looking to scale our operations and expand our market footprint by tapping into the hyperbolic growth trajectory that the hotel category is expected to witness. This requires intelligent products that are omni-present across multiple formats and are personalised to each consumer's need. Building such a product and sustaining it commercially will need deep domain knowledge and hands-on expertise. This is where veterans like Indroneel and Ankit come into the picture." said CHRO Cleartrip, Prasad Menon.

Cleartrip is also looking to augment its expertise in state-of-the-art technologies such as data sciences, machine learning, and NLP, and plans to expand its tech team by 50% over the next 75 days. Entry-level recruitment will comprise around 50% of fresh hires, while mid-level and senior-level appointments will each make up for 25% of the overall recruitment.

Most of the hiring will take place from Bangalore, which is home to the brand's technology, marketing, and design teams. Cleartrip will also deploy teams towards seeding new technology platforms such as trust and safety, data platform, and mobile web (progressive web apps).

"At Cleartrip, we constantly work on keeping our technology up-to-date to meet the latest standards in service delivery and to deliver the best travel booking experience to our users. Product tech talent comprises over 25% of our current employee base in India at present. Increasing the size of this team with around 100 more engineers is a strategic investment that will help us develop cutting-edge tech products which will herald trans-formative changes in the way travel and leisure is approached across the world," added Prasad.