ixigo Smart Lock launched on 17 September 2026, an agentic AI feature that watches eligible flight fares 24×7 in the background against a traveller’s target budget, for a fee starting at Rs 99.
The traveller enters a destination, dates and a budget. When the agent finds a fare inside that budget it locks the price for four hours and sends a notification. The feature is limited to domestic one-way flights in India for now. If no fare turns up inside the budget, the full fee is credited to the traveller’s ixigo money account, redeemable on future flight, hotel and bus bookings. “With Smart Lock, we are shifting that effort from the traveller to AI agents. Users can simply tell us where they want to go, when they want to travel and how much they are comfortable spending,” said Rajnish Kumar, co-founder and group co-CEO.
Every OTA and airline is piloting agentic AI travel booking this year. Most are starting with the agent. ixigo started with the pieces underneath it. Here are the five things it did that others did not.
1. It sold the habit first, at Rs 149
Smart Lock is the second paid price product on the app, not the first. ixigo’s Price Lock starts at Rs 149, holds a fare for anywhere from four hours to 14 days, absorbs fare increases up to Rs 4,000 per traveller on domestic routes and Rs 8,000 on international, and passes on any drop in price. The Price Lock terms are plain: it is “a price guarantee and not a seat guarantee”. It works per traveller, needs a logged-in user, asks for no passenger names until the final booking, and refunds the fee if seats sell out before the booking is completed. A customer who has paid Rs 149 to hold a fare already understands what an agent that finds and holds one is selling.
2. It priced Smart Lock below the habit, at Rs 99
Smart Lock starts at Rs 99, Rs 50 under Price Lock, and it does less: a four-hour hold rather than up to 14 days, on domestic one-way flights only. The narrow scope is the point. The agent watches a small, well-understood pool of fares, the promise fits in one sentence, and the price sits below the product the customer already knows. Operators who launch an agent at a premium, with a wide remit, are asking the customer to pay more for something less proven.
3. It made failure refundable, into ixigo money
If the agent cannot find a flight inside the budget, the full fee comes back as ixigo money, which the traveller can spend on flights, hotels and buses on the app. Price Lock set the pattern: the fee is refunded if seats sell out before booking. The agent inherits a promise the customer has already seen honoured, and the refund stays inside the app rather than going back to a card. A failed search becomes a credit toward the next booking.
4. It built the funnel on trains and buses, with a 63% share
ixigo holds a 63% OTA market share in trains. Bus GTV grew 39% year on year in Q1 FY27. Hotels delivered 0.5 million heads on beds in the quarter after a 54.66% majority stake in Brevistay and 10,000 plus direct property contracts across 700 towns, according to the company’s Q1 FY27 release. The flight agent does not have to buy its audience. It sits in an app that travellers open for a train or a bus, and the ixigo money refund routes a failed flight search back into those same categories.
5. It shipped from a book that made money, PAT up 81%
Q1 FY27 gross transaction value was Rs 5,524.33 crore, up 19%. Revenue from operations was Rs 356.75 crore, up 13%. Profit after tax was Rs 34.24 crore, up 81%, and EBITDA was Rs 53.52 crore, up 65%, with adjusted EBITDA at Rs 29.24 crore. A Rs 99 agent that refunds itself when it fails is a small bet for a company at those numbers. The agent is an add-on to a business that already works, not the plan to make one work.
Key takeaway
The one thing to copy is the order. ixigo sold a paid, refundable, manual version of the promise for years before it let software make the promise on the traveller’s behalf, and then priced the agent below it. Any hotel, airline or OTA with a booking funnel can do the same: put a price on the hold, make failure refundable in your own currency, then automate the search. We expect the operators that start with the agent instead to spend the next year teaching customers what it is for.
