Page 42 - The 10 Most Innovative Startups in Travel 2019

There’s another segment of online around any property, what is the
travel companies that are today
advertising heavily to ‘inspire’
people to travel with the belief
that acquiring a customer at the
top of the funnel will stand them
in good stead when it comes to
converting them to bookings. That
layer for meaningful engagement
and contextual inspiration
while shortening the path from
inspiration to decision is what
MeTripping’s Pathfinder product
provides.
Painting the Future Picture
More Intelligent Solutions, but
more seriously, the idea is to
plug the gap of uncertainty or
indecision wherever the consumer
feels it currently. This includes
cues on price predictions, more
comprehensive information on
Visas, Activities and what is
possible in a destination and
what isn’t. We are also building
algorithms to assess at a micro
level what a destination is like --- is Equally though, there is increasing
it a walking/ public transit city or a
driving city, what is the ambience
│42│
and so far, we have no regrets.
effect of your stay location on the
experience, how do you look at
the world if you’re starting from
London or if you’re starting from
Bangalore and much more. Some
of this may even sound cryptic –
we only hope that the solution we
deliver will create more delightful
experiences than a one-line
highlight of it can.
A Closer Look of the Industry
There are changes being seen in
travel around the world. Over the
last few months, Thomas Cook
UK, one of the world’s oldest
and largest travel companies,
announced closure of several of
its branches (with more expected)
as travel search and booking
moves online. With close to
instant solutions and increasing
independent research and booking
by travelers, travel agencies must
adapt to the needs of the more
aware and more exposed customer.
pressure on large online travel
companies to deliver more than
‘booking’ solutions.
From where we stand,
we see a nervousness in
embracing new models
of engagement for fear of
losing current cash cows
--- that’s exactly the kind
of market that is ripe for
disruption.
Shaping the Journey
In July-August 2015, my
wife (Anusha) and I, came engineers respectively) who went
back after quitting our
respective jobs to work on a thick skin, and the teammates
separate entrepreneurial
ambitions. She started
Smoodies, while I started
MeTripping. Putting all
our life savings into it,
at the same time, against
all better advice, in
two separate consumer
oriented entrepreneurial
ventures was probably as
stupid as it was brave. But
that’s the choice we made,
There have been several struggles
along the way. I had a co-founder
who quit to start his own start-up
about 8-10 months into the journey.
That was a low point when we
thought of shutting down. But
we stayed nimble, made some
manoeuvres and survived.
Then in July 2017, we raised our
first angel round 10 days before
our ‘shut-down date’. During that
month, we lost our head of data
science and another experienced
data scientist as they chose to
exit before we reached possible
shutdown. Again, we built back
up from a 3 member team and
launched more new products.
When we started on our B2B
model, we nearly got a contract
from one of India’s largest travel
companies in 2018 – in fact,
commitments were made, data
was shared, work commenced, and
then the company pulled out citing
consultants who suggested they
shouldn’t partner with a startup.
We were getting close to end of
our runway then and thought we
would die again, but here we are
having signed up more customers
while continuing our growth on the
consumer site.
A combination of perseverance,
hard work and luck has made this
progress possible. And it definitely
takes more than one person to
even go along the right path, like
Manu and Ronak (our 1 and 2
st
nd
through bad periods with me with
today who have an average tenure
of 1.5 years @ MeTripping. We
are on that path and hope that the
future will see us convert into a
‘successful’ company. We don’t
think that day is far.
│August 2019 │SwiftNLift│