A student team from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Lucknow has won the third edition of MakeMyTrip’s Young Turks: The Business Challenge, a flagship campus competition designed to crowdsource innovative solutions for India’s travel industry.

The 2025 edition witnessed its largest turnout yet, attracting 2,660 registrations and 1,249 final submissions from top management institutes nationwide. Participants were invited to develop business and product ideas addressing real-world challenges within the travel ecosystem; from enhancing customer experience to reimagining mobility and platform design.

After multiple evaluation rounds involving cross-functional leaders from product, business, and technology domains, six finalist teams were shortlisted for the grand finale at MakeMyTrip’s Gurugram headquarters.

The IIM Lucknow trio of Dakshina Rajah, Ankit Yadav, and Akshay Saini emerged winners with a presentation that stood out for its clarity, feasibility, and strong business impact. Teams from IIM Mumbai (formerly NITIE) and Indian School of Business (ISB) Hyderabad secured second and third places respectively.

The final jury included MakeMyTrip Co-founder & CEO Rajesh Magow, Group Chief Operating Officer Mohit Kabra, and senior leaders from across verticals. The challenge, according to the company, aims to bridge classroom learning and corporate problem-solving by offering students exposure to live business scenarios.

Yuvaraj Srivastava, Group Chief Human Resources Officer at MakeMyTrip, said the contest enables participants to “step into our world, solve problems drawn from real scenarios, and show how their ideas can create impact at scale”. He added that Young Turks helps the company identify and nurture “future-ready talent aligned with MakeMyTrip’s purpose and growth ambitions”.

For the winning students, the platform provided both recognition and the rare chance to test ideas against the realities of India’s rapidly evolving travel-tech landscape.