MakeMyTrip Language Warning

MakeMyTrip’s chief technology officer said global artificial intelligence models still miss too much of India’s language and cultural context to power travel planning at national scale. (afaqs.com) At an Adobe artificial intelligence forum reported on April 14, 2026, Group Chief Technology Officer Sanjay Mohan said about 45% of MakeMyTrip traffic now comes from Tier-2 and Tier-3 markets. He said the company wants to support “all languages, not just eight,” but India’s language and voice models are still less reliable than English ones. (afaqs.com) Mohan said many companies are “force-fit” adapting global models for India, and argued that approach “won’t scale for a billion users.” He also said MakeMyTrip does not build base language models itself and depends on an outside ecosystem that is still maturing. (afaqs.com; bestmediainfo.com) The warning lands as MakeMyTrip pushes deeper into conversational booking tools. In August 2025, the company launched a GenAI Trip Planning Assistant in beta in English and Hindi, with plans to add more Indian languages after early feedback. (investors.mmtcdn.com) That assistant was designed to move users from open-ended trip ideas to actual bookings through one chat flow, covering flights, hotels, holidays, ground transport, visas and foreign exchange. MakeMyTrip said the product accepts voice and text input and was built to reach users who were less comfortable booking in English. (investors.mmtcdn.com) Mohan said user behavior is already shifting from short keyword searches to longer requests that bundle destination, budget, route and constraints into one prompt. He said inspiration from Instagram and YouTube is also pushing travel companies to interpret intent, context and sentiment in real time. (afaqs.com) In a separate interview published April 13, 2026, Mohan said voice and vernacular use are going mainstream in India while local model readiness still lags. He said only 15% to 20% of India’s population can read, write or comprehend English, which leaves a large travel audience better served by regional-language and voice interfaces. (bestmediainfo.com) He pointed to Indian foundational model efforts such as Sarvam AI, but said they are not yet ready for consumer deployment at MakeMyTrip’s scale. Mohan also said richer regional-language content and more investment are still missing pieces for better voice systems. (bestmediainfo.com; afaqs.com) MakeMyTrip’s leadership has framed that work as a long-term growth bet, not a quick revenue target. In August 2025, Co-Founder and Group Chief Executive Officer Rajesh Magow said the company was starting with Hindi and expected other regional languages to follow as it tried to bring more of India’s next online travel users into the booking funnel. (fortuneindia.com)