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How India travelled in 2025, according to ixigo’s travel index
GURUGRAM: If 2025 had a boarding pass, it would read culture, curiosity and crowd-pulling experiences. ixigo’s newly released The Great Indian Travel Index 2025 offers a lively snapshot of how Indians travelled this year, and the story is anything but ordinary. From faith-fuelled pilgrimages and binge-watch-inspired holidays to first-time flyers discovering the joy of take-off, India’s travel mood stayed buoyant across flights, trains and buses.
Overall demand climbed steadily, with flight searches rising 45 per cent year on year, bus searches up 42 per cent and train searches growing by 20 per cent compared to 2024. A packed calendar of concerts, festivals and religious gatherings, combined with smoother visa access, ensured that travel never really slowed down.
One of the year’s most unexpected plot twists came courtesy of OTT platforms. Popular series such as The Family Man Season 3, Paatal Lok Season 2 and Delhi Crime Season 3 quietly turned the Northeast into a must-see destination. Viewers followed the scenery off screen, leading to sharp growth in flight bookings to Dimapur at 77 per cent, Agartala at 48 per cent, Guwahati and Imphal at 44 per cent each, and Itanagar at 42 per cent. For many travellers, the remote suddenly felt reachable.
Spiritual travel, meanwhile, found a passionate new champion in Gen Z. Meaning-led journeys took centre stage in 2025, with the Maha Kumbh driving unprecedented demand to Prayagraj. Gen Z bus bookings to the city surged nearly 20 times year on year, while the most expensive domestic flight booked on ixigo was a Mumbai to Prayagraj ticket costing Rs 92,644 during the peak Kumbh period.
Pilgrimage hotspots recorded striking growth across modes. Flight bookings jumped to Varanasi by 134 per cent and Tirupati by 102 per cent, followed by Prayagraj, Ayodhya and Shirdi. Bus and train travel mirrored this momentum, with destinations such as Varanasi, Mathura, Rishikesh, Haridwar and Gaya seeing strong double digit growth.
Indian travellers also looked beyond borders with renewed enthusiasm. Japan and South Korea emerged as the most booked international destinations, growing by 63 per cent and 61 per cent respectively. Vietnam and Thailand followed closely, while countries such as Oman, Kenya, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan signalled a growing appetite for offbeat global escapes.
Closer home, hills remained a firm favourite, with Dehradun and Srinagar leading flight demand, while coastal destinations such as Port Blair and Goa continued to draw steady crowds. The monsoon, once considered a travel pause, was reimagined as an opportunity, with leisure demand rising 35 to 40 per cent year on year as travellers chased misty views and quieter breaks.
Commenting on the findings, ixigo Group CEO Aloke Bajpai and Group co-CEO Rajnish Kumar said the index reflects a travel landscape shaped equally by faith, aspiration and access. Over half of new flight bookers on ixigo’s NBU app were first-time flyers, while Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities increasingly drove demand across all modes.
In 2025, travel in India was not just about reaching destinations. It was about stories, beliefs and first steps into the wider world, all neatly captured in ixigo’s year-long map of movement.
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Tessolve lands a semiconductor veteran to drive its next big push
Ravi Kumar Chirugudu, who started his career at ISRO and has spent 35 years building chips and companies, joins the Bengaluru-based firm as president and chief operating officer
BENGALURU: Tessolve has never been shy about its ambitions. The Bengaluru-based engineering services firm already counts 18 of the world’s top 20 semiconductor companies among its clients, employs more than 3,500 engineers across 12 countries, and last year pocketed a $150m investment from TPG. Now it has hired the executive it believes can turn those assets into something bigger. Ravi Kumar Chirugudu, a 35-year semiconductor veteran who once built satellite payloads for ISRO and has since scaled engineering organisations across three continents, joins as president and chief operating officer, effective immediately.
THE MAN AND THE MANDATE
The appointment is, by any measure, a serious hire. Ravi Kumar Chirugudu comes to Tessolve after senior leadership stints at HCL Technologies, Altran and Wipro, where he managed large profit-and-loss portfolios and oversaw cross-regional teams. Over the course of his career, he has been instrumental in bringing more than 1,000 new products to market across the high-tech, energy and manufacturing verticals. Before the private sector claimed him, he began his working life as a scientist at the Indian Space Research Organisation, contributing to research and development in charge-coupled device technology and satellite payloads, a foundation that shaped everything that followed.
In his new role, he will lead Tessolve’s global growth strategy: expanding its engineering capabilities, deepening customer relationships and accelerating innovation across semiconductor and high-performance computing domains. The brief is broad, but the context is specific. Tessolve operates in the $550 billion global semiconductor market, and its recent moves, the acquisition of Germany’s Dream Chip Technologies and the TPG funding round, have sharpened both its reach and its expectations.
Srini Chinamilli, co-founder and chief executive of Tessolve, is characteristically direct about why Ravi Kumar Chirugudu was the choice:
“As we scale our global semiconductor and system engineering capabilities, Ravi’s appointment marks an important step forward. As global semiconductor demand continues to accelerate across industries, it is creating significant opportunities across the semiconductor lifecycle, from design, packaging, validation and systems integration. Ravi’s deep knowledge and leadership in this ecosystem brings the right mix of industry expertise, customer connect and execution capability, which will play a key role in strengthening our position as a trusted global engineering partner and reinforcing our market leadership.”
THE NEW ARRIVAL SPEAKS
Ravi Kumar Chirugudu, for his part, frames the move in terms of timing and culture, two factors that veteran executives tend to weigh as heavily as title or compensation:
“I am happy to join Tessolve at a time when the industry is rapidly evolving towards more complex, AI-driven systems. What stands out to me is its strong people-first culture and its commitment to bringing value to its customers. The strength of its global team, combined with its deep expertise in semiconductor innovation and next-generation product engineering, creates a solid foundation to build differentiated, scalable solutions. I look forward to working closely with the team to drive strategic growth and strengthen its role in shaping the global semiconductor ecosystem.”
The reference to AI-driven systems is not incidental. The semiconductor industry is in the midst of a structural reshaping, driven by the insatiable compute demands of artificial intelligence. For engineering services firms like Tessolve, which offers end-to-end capabilities from silicon design to packaged parts and invests in high-performance computing, high-speed interfaces, photonics and 5G, the moment is both an opportunity and a test. The company says it is well positioned to capture the next wave of industry growth. Ravi Kumar Chirugudu is now the person who has to prove it.
He came in from outer space, literally, and spent three decades learning how the semiconductor industry works from the inside out. Now Tessolve is betting that accumulated knowledge can help it cross the next frontier. In the $550 billion global chip market, the gap between ambition and execution is measured in engineering hours and leadership quality. Tessolve has just gone shopping for both.
