Shakti Goel joins Yatra.com as chief architect and data scientist

Gurugram-based online travel agency Yatra.com or Yatra Online has appointed Shakti Goel as chief architect and data scientist to lead the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) and data science initiatives.

Goel has over 25 years of experience across diverse industries such as travel, banking, transport and logistics, retail, financial markets and pharmaceuticals. In his last role prior to joining Yatra, Goel was worked at Travel Boutique Online (TBO), a global travel distribution platform involved in an ambitious project of building an enterprise-wide data warehouse across all lines of businesses in the travel domain.

Prior to that, he worked as chief product and technology officer at Faircent, a peer-to-peer lending companies in India, chief technology officer (CTO) for the Financial Inclusion and Banking division of HCL Infosystems and CTO of Aakash Educational Services.

Goel completed his Doctor of Science (Sc.D.) and Master of Science (M.Sc) in chemical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, US, and Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech.), from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), New Delhi, India.

“With AI seen as the next technology frontier and a core driver for innovation in travel going forward, Dr. Goel will be a valuable contributor in leading our Data and AI Initiatives as we continue to lead the path for business travel innovation in India,” Dhruv Shringi, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, said in a statement.

With approximately 94,000 hotels and homestays contracted in approximately 1,400 cities across India as well as more than 2 million hotels around the world, Yatra.com is one of India’s largest platforms for domestic hotels.

The company has reported an impressive 85% increase in business for FY23, surpassing the domestic air traffic growth of 65% in the first nine months of the year. The company’s buses and trains segment also saw a 150% increase, with the company expecting continued growth in FY24.