Yatra.com Launches 'YUVA', a Universal Virtual Assistant
GURGAON, India and NEW YORK, May 1, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --
The AI platform offers customers a highly personalized travel booking experience
Yatra Online, Inc. (NASDAQ: YTRA, OTCQX: YTROF), India's leading online travel company, has taken an innovative approach to delivering a personalized experience and launched - 'YUVA', which stands for Yatra Universal Virtual Assistant. A unique and first-of-its-kind "Hybrid approach" that allows customers to use both voice and text to communicate with YUVA and complete their travel bookings on the go. YUVA is available on the desktop, Android, IOS, Google Assistant and Facebook Messenger.
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Supporting various Indian accents, YUVA enables intuitive voice-based customer interaction, answering questions related to flight bookings and providing expertise and relevant results in real time. No longer do customers have to search through content on the company's website, instead they can now interact directly with YUVA and obtain the information they need in an instant.
Users can search and book flights, apply multiple filters, rearrange and modify bookings. In addition users can interact with YUVA and obtain the relevant information through interactive voice communication. For example, 'Show me refundable non-stop flights from Delhi to Mumbai for next Sunday morning' or 'My wife and I would like to go to Delhi from Mumbai in business class on Christmas this year.'
Commenting on the new launch, Mr. Manish Amin, Co-Founder & CIO, Yatra.com said, "Yatra has been pushing the boundaries of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to deliver a convenient and enhanced booking experience for our customers. YUVA is an amalgamation of Yatra's in-house Natural Language Processing module connected with a proprietary backend for conversation steering. We are delighted with the launch of YUVA at a time when the market and the customer is continuously evolving. It will change the customer experience by replacing clicks with sustained conversations and personalised interactions."
Future versions of YUVA will feature multi-lingual support starting with Hindi followed by other widely-spoken regional languages and will also assist customers in hotel and holiday bookings.
About Yatra Online, Inc and Yatra Online Pvt Ltd
Yatra Online, Inc is the parent company of Yatra Online Pvt. Ltd. which is based in Gurugram, India and is one of India's leading online travel companies and operates the website Yatra.com. The company provides information, pricing, availability, and booking facility for domestic and international air travel, domestic and international hotel bookings, holiday packages, buses, trains, in city activities, inter-city and point-to-point cabs, homestays and cruises. As a leading platform of accommodation options, Yatra provides real-time bookings for more than 83,000 hotels in India and over 800,000 hotels around the world.
Customers can access Yatra in multiple ways: through a user-friendly website, mobile optimized WAP site and applications, a multi-lingual call center, a countrywide network of Holiday Lounges and Yatra Travel Express stores.
Launched in August 2006, Yatra was ranked the Most Trusted e-Commerce Travel Brand in India in the Economic Times Brand Equity Survey 2016 for the second successive year, and has won the National Tourism Award for 'Best Domestic Tour Operator (Rest of India)' at the India Tourism Awards held in September 2017 for the third time in a row.
Safe Harbor Statement:
This press release contains certain statements concerning the Company's future growth prospects and forward-looking statements, as defined in the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on the Company's current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections about the Company and its industry. These forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "will," "project," "seek," "should" and similar expressions. Such statements include, among other things, management's beliefs as well as our strategic and operational plans. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. A number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement. Potential risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the slow-down of economic growth in India and the global economic downturn, general declines or disruptions in the travel industry, volatility in the trading price of our shares, our reliance on our relationships with travel suppliers and strategic alliances, failure to further increase our brand recognition to obtain new business partners and consumers, failure to compete against new and existing competitors, failure to successfully manage current growth and potential future growth, risks associated with any strategic investments or acquisitions, seasonality in the travel industry in India and overseas, failure to successfully develop our corporate travel business, damage to or failure of our infrastructure and technology, loss of services of our key executives, and inflation in India and in other countries. These and other factors are discussed in our reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. All information provided in this press release is provided as of the date of issuance of this press release, and we do not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement, except as required under applicable law.
For further information, please contact:
Manish Hemrajani
Yatra Online, Inc.
VP, Head Investor Relations
manish.hemrajani@yatra.com
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SOURCE Yatra Online, Inc.
