India's 10 Best Travel Tech Companies to watch in 2020

India’s 10 Best Travel Tech Companies To Watch-2020 2020 | VOLUME-02 | ISSUE-01

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MOST INNOVATIVE TRAVEL TECH 2020

Sandesh Reddy Co-founder & Head of Finance & Strategy

Purav Shah Co-founder & CEO

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Your Go-To Place for Everything Travel

Then and Now: The Metamorphosis of the Travel Industry

Editor Shambhavi Mhetre

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t’s an undeniable fact that technology has changed the way a person lives his life. From buying property online, selling utensils, videoconferencing to perform a surgery to marketing content, everything can be done through a single touch. While all this technological advancement has leveraged the entire world, travel and tourism is no exception.

Before getting into the future of how travel experience is on the spree to adopt changes, let us rewind our memories back to the generation of our forefathers. At that time, people had little or no knowledge about a place.

They had to travel and then explore their likes and dislike. The percentage of people frequently travelling was considerably low.

There is no harm to say that a person’s world can be expanded with the

expansion of his knowledge. Speaking about travelling, today, we can first explore our options, take a virtual tour and then set out on the journey. From booking hotels and accommodations, booking flight tickets to planning an entire itinerary, travelling has become an easy and fun task.

Currently, the travel and tourism industry has opened up the entire world for travellers to explore and experience beautiful destinations to make wonderful lifetime memories.

However, this wouldn’t be entirely possible without the advancement in technology.

Let’s say you want to book a tour. A few decades ago, you had to go to a travel agent then convey your requirements and accordingly he would provide you with the best package.

But, today, there are various operating and booking systems that assist you in booking a tour through a reliable travel agent to fulfil your travel needs.

Another classic example is that of the usage of maps. In the olden times, people used the maps while travelling.

But, today, we have got online maps.

Online maps have actually been a

EDITOR’s NOTE blessing in disguise. Just mark the places you want to visit and voila, you are already at your destination!

In India, there are many companies who are well established as well as emerging with some innovative tech ideas to provide seamless user experience to the tourists. There are various platforms which help users select the right package and destination according to their budget, the climatic conditions, travel duration and other aspects.

Apart from online assistance in planning the tour, there are various platforms that ensure the safety of tourists. These online portals or platforms provide quick assistance and one-click call to the emergency department. In our edition of India's 10 Best Travel Tech Companies To Watch-2020, we have showcased some extraordinary ideas.

On the cover, we have QuaQua whose aim is to deliver real and immersive travel experiences through storytelling, that inspires people to travel. Apart from this, we have featured Gabbit Trans System whose system helps tourists to get various tourism services that are available nearby to the tourist’s location; Holidify has been simplifying travel planning for people across the globe through a full-stack online platform; India Assist works on

improving the travel experience of people visiting India by providing an on-call ‘Assistance & Distress management’ service.

Along with this, we are happy to feature Pay4Biz, a travel technology startup, that allows B2B retailers to book travel tickets along with recharges, money transfer and utility payments all under a single panel.

Technogram helps its customers generate leads while creating customer engagement which ensures that a longlasting bond is formed.

We have also featured an interview with Mayank Kukreja and Anish Khadiya, the co-founders of ITILITE. We would also like to mention Rodeo Travel Technologies, Trivo and Travelstop for providing exceptional customer services and leading the travel industry ahead.

In this edition, we have also included an article - Virtual Reality: The Future of Travel and Tourism written by one of our writers.

Happy Reading!

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08 Your Go-To Place for Everything Travel

SPECIAL PROFILE

16 INDIA ASSIST Most Innovative Travel Tech 2020

CONTENTS

Cover Story

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EXPLORE OUTING A Preferred Name within Travel and Tourism Space

TECHNOGRAM Spearheading Online Travel Businesses towards Success

INTERVIEW WITH INSIGHTS SUCCESS

28 HOLIDIFY Bringing Global Travel Experiences to your Fingertips

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Article

PAY4BIZ A Preferred Platform for B2B Retailers

ITILITE Making Business Trips Easy and Cost-Effective

TIME TRAVEL Virtual Reality: The Future of Travel and Tourism

Editor-in-Chief Pooja M. Bansal Managing Editor Shambhavi Mhetre Publishing Control Team Shruti, Rahul Quality Assurance Team Darshan, Abhishaj, Sneha Contributing Writer

Vishal Muktewar

Art & Design Head Amol Kamble Associate Designer Poonam Mahajan Art & Picture Editor Priyanka Rajage Co-designer Deepanjali Jena Business Development Manager Megha Mishra Business Development Lead Tejshwini Whaval Sr. Business Development Executive Ashwini, Sarika Technical Head Pratiksha Patil Technical Specialist Amar Sawant Digital Marketing Manager Prashant Chevale SME-SMO Executive Uma Circulation Manager Tanaji sales@insightssuccess.com

February, 2020 Corporate Ofď€ ces: Insights Success Media and Technology Pvt. Ltd. Off. No. 22 & 510, Rainbow Plaza, Shivar Chowk, Pimple Saudagar, Pune, Maharashtra 411017 Phone - India: +91 7410079881/ 82/ 83/ 84/ 85 Email: info@insightssuccess.in For Subscription: www.insightssuccess.in

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Purav Shah Sandesh Reddy Co-founder & Head of Finance & Strategy

Co-founder & CEO

COVER STORY

Your Go-To Place for Everything Travel

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re you a carefree backpacker, with wanderlust coursing through your veins? Have the tantalising mountains, the peaceful rivers, the mystifying meadows and the sunny sands called out to you? Has your venturing spirit spoken to you of an approaching voyage to lands unknown? If yes, then you are in the right place reading the right article.

India’s 10 Best Travel Tech Companies To Watch, 2020 is an edition that aims to exhibit innovative organizations and their game-changing platforms, solutions and services which are driving the travel and tourism industry to new heights. Among these companies, one emerging player set to take the travel and tourism industry by storm, is QuaQua, a content first travel platform. It is has a few renowned patents to its name. It also uses AI for seamless user experience.

QuaQua is the world’s first end-to-end travel platform that incorporates the entire life-cycle of a traveller at a single place – from inspiration, to planning, booking, on the ground support and post-travel memories. The company’s objective is to deliver real and immersive travel experiences through storytelling, that inspire people to travel.

QuaQua aims to bridge the gap between METADATA (curated and non-redundant information related to each POI), CONTENT (immersive visual stories augmented with QuaQua features), BOOKINGS (Personalized and curated visual itineraries and facilitation) and COMMUNITY

• • •

City Pages: Applying metadata, content, booking and community for each city in the world Associate network: Creating a network of vloggers, videographers and bloggers Customizable Itineraries: Creating customizable itineraries for each city for a period of between 1-7 days

c) Booking: • •

Metasearch: Introducing first ever metasearch engine for Flights, Attractions and Activities Hyper Integration: $ 8.31 Tn travel ecosystem in one place – One stop shop for all travel needs

d) Profile : •

Personalization: Provide intelligent feedback and suggestions at content, information, itinerary and transaction level.

Next in line for them is packages. They plan to introduce

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We strive to translate worlds travel experiences into captivating 360 videos and AR/VR stories to provide real and immersive end to end travel experiences.

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b) Planning:

metasearch for hotels, packages and be the first website to have comparison model of holiday packages.

destination, places to stay and eat with the precautions to be taken while on travel to any destination.

QuaQua is inherently a B2B2C model. While the company integrates the best of content, information, ratings, bookings and the likes for our consumers, we act as an integrator for the travel ecosystem. Its B2B network includes flight, events, attraction and activities.

QuaQua relies on various online information systems, information from its associates and locals, extensive data analytics to provide the most accurate and real time information about a destination on its platform.

Beholding a Transformative Future

QuaQua has already created the world’s first metasearch engine for attractions, activities and experiences. “We are proud to have industry leaders such as Skyscanner, Ticketmaster, GetYourGuide, Musement, and Viator (TripAdvisor company) as our partners,” the co-founders express.

QuaQua is a content first platform aiming to deliver real and immersive travel experiences through storytelling, that inspire people to travel. The company intends to focus on a smooth traveller journey that rightfully starts from the planning research phase and ends with the community sharing phase.

Addressing the Industry’s Shortcomings Sharing their understanding of the current problems in the travel and tourism industry, team QuaQua states that, 43% travellers admit that they pay higher prices of flight/hotels due to delay in decision making and they face a fragmented experience due to disjoint platforms for different travel offerings. The team believes that it takes 45 days in planning an end to end vacation and it takes 38 touch points on different websites during a booking journey, this is global industry average.

According to the team, other problems which create barriers between travellers and a quality experience are, being misguided through social media; unauthenticated reviews; obsolete and redundant data; monotonous planning process; non-personalized information; lack of AI engine leading to wrong recommendations of information; non-curated information; inadequate or exaggerated travel marketing; absence of better security infrastructure for travellers; and absence of reliable information systems.

QuaQua offers a plethora of solutions to tackle these limitations and barriers. It enables travelers to see the destination before planning their travel, the VR and AR technologies enables the travelers to decide whether a particular destination matches their preferences or not.

Through its city highlights section curated by the locals, the uniqueness of the destinations is correctly communicated.

While the betterment of the infrastructure is addressed by the governments, QuaQua tries to cater to end to end requirements of the travellers leaving them with no ambiguity right from what they can expect from a

The company meticulously creates, curates and integrates engaging travel experiences that would inspire people to travel, virtually first and physically later. And what more, unlike any other travel platform out there, it leverages Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality to bring immersive, interactive, informative 360o stories on mobile, web, VR glasses and even 360o domes.

“Our AI based personalization engine coupled with patented dynamic story telling will help us scale faster than any other success story one has encountered in this industry,” state the co-founders. In the next 1 year, QuaQua shall be amongst the top 3 content-based travel platform and top 3 360-degree travel content consumption platform.

The users are also benefited by the 2D and 360-degree travel content as it is free for consumption. The company’s metasearch engine for experiences and activities is the only one out there and with the first mover advantage, it intends to be the top player in this space.

To learn more about QuaQua, its platform and offerings, visit:

www.quaqua.com

Harish Khatri Founder

Moqierish Tak Co-founder

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India Assist

MOST INNOVATIVE TRAVEL TECH 2020

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ndia is an exotic travel destination, one of UNESCO’s leading heritage sites which includes the world-famous Taj Mahal. It is a nation with tremendous diversity of terrain, culture and history. Every facet of its being has thousands of stories to tell. It intrigues and fascinates travellers from world over.

Millions of foreign tourists come to India every year.

According to a report by FICCI, India’s inbound tourism will touch Rs 35 trillion by 2029! Yet, many travelers still remain concerned about the safety aspects, about the plausible travel experience the country has to offer.

India Assist, a mobile application startup has come up with solutions to revolutionize the way people travel. It works on improving the travel experience of people visiting India by providing an on-call ‘Assistance & Distress management’ service.

Inside the App: India Assist India Assist’s core product offers assistance and distress management service via a subscription-based phone app. It assists its users with services that include verified information and personalized assistance through its onground team in medical emergencies, theft, loss, altercation, and transit.

The App has a Meet and Greet Service feature, wherein it provides tourists a pick and drop service from various public transport places to their point of destination. The company’s on-ground team escort travelers to ensure safe travel even at odd hours. By constantly working with its team, India Assist ensures that its staff is compassionate. Its

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‘Help First’ motto ingrained within every member ensures that the subscriber is put at ease and comforted.

The App experience is a B2C model which is downloaded and used directly by the foreign traveller for an enriching and incredible experience during their visit to our country by means of providing assistance through human interaction (over call and in person).

However, the stakeholders of this product are part of the B2B model. It is relevant to the entire travel trade universe in India as all service providers, whether they are airlines, hotels, travel agents, will want the inbound traveler to feel safe and secure in the country and will want to deliver the best travel experience to their clients.

United with a Purpose India Assist was founded in 2017, however, its inception happened way back in 2014, when its Founder, Harish Khatri was traveling to the USA. Harish interacted with many people who were extremely intrigued and excited about India, but had doubts about the country’s safety aspects. Everyone wanted to visit India but were unsure and uncertain of navigating within the complex country.

Harish and Co-Founder of India Assist, Moqierish Tak both being avid travelers, connected due to their common experience and love for Travel and Sports. They identified a serious gap in the travel and tourism landscape, that of security and active on-ground assistance for travellers which is lacking almost everywhere and is a global issue.

Harish and Moqierish understood how the lack of security

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and active assistance restricted tourists from enjoying their travel within the country. They also recognized that no such assistance existed at the moment, and finding relevant information was a long and tedious process.

we are constantly upgrading it for a better user experience.”

With a desire to make assistance easily available to inbound travelers in India, and guide tourists through verified information, both left their successful careers in Sports & Events, to provide tourists in India a unique and convenient experience. They conceptualized and launched India Assist with a vision to ‘bridge the gap and enhance the Indian Experience for travelers.’

According to India Assist, the major challenges faced by the Travel and Tourist Industry in India are at two levels. First, the perception of foreigners about India regarding security and safety threats, crimes against women, unreliable transportation, etc. Two, the lack of verified assistance and verified information.

Conquering Challenges along the Way The road to becoming one of the most sought after travel app wasn’t without hurdles for India Assist. For the company, its biggest challenge was not having a template to follow while developing the App and its service-end.

Without an investor on-board, it was difficult for the company and to meet its expectations vs the cost. However, the team was determined not to compromise. In the words of Harish, “We were determined that we will not compromise and give a half-baked product to our customers. Thankfully once investors started believing in our vision and product, things eased out. It took us almost 2 years to perfect the technology that we now work with, and

Aiding the Travel Industry

By providing verified assistance and information, India Assist is filling the tourism gap. It hopes that once foreigners start receiving appropriate assistance, they will view India as a responsible tourism destination.

Empathy lies at the core of India Assist. It is a guiding force behind the development of the company’s product. Every service, action and initiative is focused towards benefiting the tourist in terms of making their life easy while they travel.

Envisioning the Future India Assist has successfully launched on both Google Play store and the Apple App store and have the services

“

India Assist helps you travel carefree by providing active on-ground assistance and distress management, channelized through our mobile application

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currently available in Delhi NCR. The company will soon make its services available in Jaipur and Agra, but do not envisage its market at a city or country level. It considers the planet as its market. The company has used this as an underlying framework for developing its product which will have global usage. It states that it took three years to develop world-class technology. This product can be offered in any part of the world to any customer. The company is planning to implement the product in a few countries by the end of 2020.

India Assist constantly works on adding more value-added services to its product basket. It intends to add a variety of hyperlocal services on a city level that will showcase the unique flavor and the offerings of the city itself.

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An Inspiring Message According to the company, all stakeholders like airlines, hotels, travel agents, OTAs, Government authorities, etc. need to support the cause of assistance to travelers. India Assist aims to collaborate with all segments of the travel industry to take care of their customers whenever they need any assistance, and enhance the India experience for everyone.

The start-up team, led by the two founders Harish and Moqierish, have a motivational message for the Indian Travel and Tourism Industry by saying, “Let us together make India a great and safe destination to travel.”

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Explore Outing A Preferred Name within Travel and Tourism Space

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here was a time when people had to travel according to the travel company’s itinerary.

This meant missing out on plenty of unexplored sites which only locals could suggest. But, as time progressed, people started shifting towards experiential travel. They wanted to experience the local culture and explore the hidden gems. They no more want to be dependent on age old fashioned travel planners.

As people are moving from generic travel planning to personalized travel experience, there are many challenges for both, the travellers as well as travel companies and planners. Ranging from travel safety to getting in touch with the locals, travellers these days need everything organized. Catering to the current needs of the travel communities including the travellers and the travel companies, Explore Outing of Gabbit Trans System is leading the travel and tourism sphere.

The aim of Explore Outing is to enrich tourism experience by solving problems in tourism sector using technology & collaboration as the bridge. Experience is the current driving force of the tourism arena.

Tourists and travellers are always looking to explore different places and to-do things as per their choice.

As people want to have a personalized

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experience, there are three major factors that need to be considered. This starts from tourist’s personal choice, tourism knowledge and information on tourist safety. Fortunately, there are both, private as well as government service providers in India who are endlessly working towards providing seamless travel experience.

Speaking about B2B, the SME tourism service providers generally lack behind when it comes to technology. Which in turn makes it difficult for them to have an online booking system. Explore Outing provides a simple solution which brings them online while marketing their offerings to nearby tourists.

While these providers are leveraging the overall experience, Gabbit Systems under its brand name Explore Outing is using technology as a networkbackbone. The system helps tourists to get various tourism services available in and nearby to a place which they can access using the system.

The Driving Force of Explore Outing Vipul Jain, the Founder and CEO of Explore Outing is a passionate traveller with 25 years experience in corporate management, technology and engineering. He is responsible for the strategy and planning of all the processes at Explore Outing.

On the Go Services With a smooth and user-friendly mobile application, Explore Outing offers services to both B2B and B2C. When it comes to B2C, the primary clients, tourists use the app for acquiring information on various tourism services available in and around that place, book services as per their choice, interact with nearby tourists, emergency response etc. Apart from the basic services, tourists are also provided vital information like road and weather status, crowd and queue information at various attractions, etc. The application also provides the users with alerts, warnings and safety messages based on their location.

On the other hand, Vikal Kulshreshtha, the Director - Tourism & Hospitality has an extensive 23 years of experience in travel and tourism. He has a BHM degree from IHM, Jaipur and a Masters in Travel and Tourism. He owned and operated a travel company for 25 years. Currently, he is responsible for the execution of tie-ups in the travel and tourism industry.

Ladder to Success With the motto of organizing the unorganized sector, Explore Outing started its journey by providing tourism experience. It did so by

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India’s

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Travel

Tech Companies To Watch-2020

What’s Ahead for Explore Outing?

Vipul says, “Last year, the travel and tourism industry in India grew at 6.7% (and is expected to grow by 8.5% in the current year). It contributed to about 9.2% of the country’s GDP. We are seeing a shift in the tourist choice - from just travel to ‘experiential travel’. This means tourists now want to experience the place, local art & culture, market etc.”

This is exactly where Explore Outing is focusing on, where the company is bringing local providers to mainstream tourism. This not only helps tourists in getting ‘experience’ but also the local economy.

Vikal Kulshreshtha Director

reaching out to the local (small & big) providers and explaining their need to be a part of the system. The company had to face a few obstacles on the path to provide a simple and easy-to-use system to the travel and tourism sector.

The major concern for Explore Outing was the issue of the safety of the tourist. Tourist safety issues are usually ignored. Most people understand its importance but don’t own it. For many people, solution means a call to a pre-fed phone number or sharing location via an app. But all these systems are catering to an individual after the incidence which is of no use.

Here, Explore Outing has been solving the problems with a wide network of tourism components and stakeholder in addition to tourism knowledge and location-based technology. The company provides a proactive and preincidence system that keeps on monitoring situation, send timely alerts and warnings, and help during an emergency.

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“

We provide a proactive and pre-incidence system that keeps on monitoring situation, send timely alerts and warnings, and help during an emergency.

“

Vipul Jain Founder and CEO

Explore Outings’ product is already well-established in one state in association with the tourism industry and government. It further will work on growing with different states and partnering with tourism stakeholders. In the end, Vipul adds, “The tourism problems that we are addressing are of global nature, very soon we will be going to the International market.”

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itilite

MAKING BUSINESS TRIPS EASY AND COST-EFFECTIVE

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n our professional life, whether we prefer it or not, we have to travel for our work purposes. So, why not invest in something which makes our life and our company’s work easy?

With the aim to reduce organizations’ business travel expenditure, ITILITE, an integrated AI-powered SaaSbased travel platform provides an unbeatable solution.

Through a unique model of employee incentivization, its goal is to make the corporate booking experiences seamless.

In this interview, founders, Mayank Kukreja and Anish Khadiya, have made an effort to showcase the endless amount of work and dedication put in by the team at ITILITE to bring a change in the way business travels work.

What type of offerings does ITILITE deliver? Is it limited to a B2B model?

ITILITE was formed with the aim to bring business travel online and to streamline the entire business travel ecosystem through an offering that balances technology innovation & human intervention.

Through its intelligent platform that functions on consumerfocused touch points ITILITE learns employee preferences and creates personalized recommendations. On the one hand, companies use ITILITE's platform to encourage the cost-consciousness of employees during business travel, while on the other hand employees get to keep a part of the savings as personal rewards by saving money for the company. Thus, through a mutually beneficial, technologically driven and cost-effective approach, ITILITE strives to make the business travel experience a coherent and enjoyable one for companies and employees alike.

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About the Leaders Mayank Kukreja is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Ofcer at ITILITE, and an alumnus of IIT Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad.

Prior to co-founding ITILITE, Mayank worked with McKinsey and Myntra where his role revolved across strategy, operations, sales, product development and pricing.

On the other hand, Anish Khadiya, also the Co-Founder and Chief Business Ofcer at ITILITE, and an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur and IIM Lucknow. Anish has spent more than 14 years gaining professional experience across sectors including time spent at McKinsey & Myntra.

Travelling has been a key aspect of their professional lives, and ITILITE is the result of personal experience with corporate travel, and the state thereof. At one point, Mayank and Anish were travelling for almost 200 days in a year for their respective projects. They realized, planning a business trip was an ofine, time-consuming process every single time.

That is when an idea started evolving: A new approach to business travel that helps companies save on travel costs while creating a convenient and rewarding experience for employees.

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INTERVIEW WITH INSIGHTSSUCCESS

Anish Khadiya

Mayank Kukreja

Co-Founder

Co-founder

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OUR TEAMS ENSURE IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS OF THE DATA, LEADING TO ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS FOR ORGANIZATIONS TO PUT INTO EFFECT PERIODICALLY

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ITILITE has a 3-pronged business model aimed at the finance team, the admin teams, and the end customers.

What are the challenges your company faces? How do you overcome such challenges?

One of the biggest challenges that we face is the balancing act between organizations and end-users. Travel, even business travel, is a service-based industry. ITILITE aims to create a great business travel experience; from booking to the actual travel, and post-travel processes.

In this context, our biggest challenge is to live up to customer expectations in terms of our clients, as well as the end-user. This implies that we need to deliver excellence B2B as well as B2C. The ITILITE offering is not a onetime exercise. With every trip, every booking, and every process, the need for excellence is paramount. Hence, the challenge is to deliver the best experience with every experience that the client has.

To deliver on all fronts, we ensure a dynamic development strategy which is customer-sourced. Our customer success teams are in touch with the client, to ensure all feedback is received, and acted upon wherever possible, to make the platform deliver on user expectations, thereby making adoption easier and more beneficial to the organization. Our rewards model also drives adoption and positive experiences by ensuring that the user gains as well as the organization when adhering to company policy, or picking a budget-friendly travel option.

Our policy of being customer-first has let us not only deliver great experiences, but also sets us apart as a player that impacts the business ecosystem, and not only as one that delivers a travel package.

What is your opinion about the current scenario of the Travel and Tourism industry and your role with respect to it?

The current travel & tourism industry is just that: travel & tourism.

In this setup, business travel forms one added offering wherein the services are catering to business travel requirements. It has been seen in multiple industries, a consumer service cannot efficiently cater to a business requirement. While the B2C sector is doing well, despite

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multiple problems of funds, carriers shutting down, and more, the business travel sector is sadly underserved.

This is due to a few reasons: • • • •

The tedious and offline business travel booking process Massively fragmented market Focus on ‘cheapest tickets’ over long-term value Lack of strong technology innovation in the space

ITILITE is built for corporate, and by business travellers.

Therefore, it addresses various issues unresolved by the incumbent travel management models. We are building the first smart, cost-efficient and employee-friendly platform in a market which is currently dominated globally by offline processes and clunky systems. Specifically, we fill 3 gaps in the market • Cost Reduction • Employee Productivity • Company Control & Insights Through this approach, we break the clutter of the travel industry which focuses purely on lowest cost per ticket and deliver long-lasting organization-level value. By rewarding employees to choose smarter options, we ensure behavioural change aligned to policy compliance, while maintaining happiness quotient.

By delivering periodic insights to organizations, we drive growth on a real-time basis. Through a digitally hosted platform, we provide support to the overall budgeting processes by creating a seamless, trackable experience at all levels.

How do you envision the future of your company?

In the coming year, we aim to grow our clientele to 500 businesses. We will also be establishing an international presence to support our multi-country customers and then to serve the increasing demand we are seeing from those countries. With support from our multinational customers, we see it as a natural progression in our growth journey. As we grow our market share, we will also forge partnerships with other technology startups and companies that will allow us to offer a seamless experience to our customers.

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Holidify

Bringing Global Travel Experiences to your Fingertips

W

hen it comes to travelling, today’s generation are no less than any professional travel planner. With the entire world’s knowledge on their fingertips, people now have become independent. From planning a vacation with the family to travelling solo, people are more inclined towards experiential travel.

While there are many websites and mobile application which help you to plan your travel, Holidify stands out due to its simple, quick and personalized interface.

Holidify stands for simplifying travel planning for people across the globe(the vision) by building a fullstack online platform that makes all types of travel-related information and products accessible at one place(the mission).

With this, Rohit Shroff and Kovid Kapoor, the Co-Founders of Holidify provide us with an overview of the company’s interesting journey throughout the years.

What type of offerings does Holidify deliver? Is it limited to a B2B model?

Holidify runs www.holidify.com (the website) and Trip Planner (Android App). It has in-depth coverage on 1000+ destinations worldwide through editorial content around ‘what’, ‘when’ and ‘how’ on any destination.

Apart from that, we help travellers to connect to the trusted travel agents for the holiday packages. Also, you can find the right stay option for your vacation and exciting experiences and activities on Holidify. We have tied-up 28 | February 2020

with top players in the industry, like Airbnb and Booking.com, to facilitate the same.

No, Holidify is a consumer-facing internet company. It’s an open platform and you need not pay anything to use it.

What are the challenges your company faces? How do you overcome such challenges?

Travel, as an industry, is very competitive globally. You can see travel booking websites leaving no stone unturned to increase their market share by leveraging on deep discounts.

When it comes to travel discovery and planning, it is at a juncture where both offline (travel agents, friends and families, magazines) and online ecosystems(websites, social media influencers, blogs) co-exist with no clear advantage of one over the other.

In such a scenario, it is quite challenging(yet exciting) to position your product in the market.

Having said that, travel comes with its own virtue of limitless avenues of growth, be it geographically, or in terms of business transactions. There has been a recent upsurge in DIY(Do It Yourself) travel, where millennials are going a step ahead of the mainstream tourist destinations and looking for offbeat places and new vacations ideas.

Holidify, as an online travel planning platform, is an ‘enabler’ that could provide authentically all the information you require for planning your next vacation as a free independent traveller.

Also, as internet penetration is

growing, a platform like Holidify is successful in filling the knowledge gap around anything related to travel to a much larger audience. Today, if you want to plan your trip to Europe you can do it all by yourself and need not necessarily depend on travel agents, which was the case a few years back.

What according to you are a few major problems faced by Travel and Tourism companies? How does Holidify help solve such issues?

Cut-throat competition, building credibility and ensuring sustainable growth are the top problems(or challenges you may say) companies in this industry are facing.

At our core, we strongly believe in ‘users first’ philosophy. We want to build a platform where the majority of the content is by actual travellers. This is how you build credibility. Growing the business metrics and achieving scales by heavily leveraging on technology, instead of increasing reliance on human resources, is instrumental to have sustainable growth.

What is your opinion about the current scenario of the Travel and Tourism industry and your role with respect to it?

Travel and tourism contribute to more than 10% of global economic activities. One out of every five new jobs were created by this industry over the last 6 years. This gives the essence of how important the travel and tourism industry is. People are travelling more often. Almost 1.5 billion international trips happened in the past year. www.insightssuccess.in

India’s

Travel

Tech Companies To Watch-2020

Rohit Shroff Co-founder Holidify stands for travel discovery and planning. We see our role, as a platform, to make all the stages of travelinspiration, discovery, planning, booking, reviews-engaging and easy for everyone, everywhere.

How do you motivate your team to think out-of-the-box in terms of creating innovative solutions?

We have a team of 18 people and collectively we have travelled to more than 30 countries. This brings in a lot of travel experience on the table. As a company, we encourage our team members to travel more often.

Also, there’s no better way to create a solution than to put yourself in the shoes of your customer/user. Whatever we do, we ask ourselves a question about how it is going to help someone travelling or planning to travel!

The combination of the two forces-travel experience and customer empathy-brings in fresh ideas from the team that could be transformed into practical solutions.

How do you envision the future of your company?

Holidify is at the cusp of becoming a full-stack, global travel planning platform. Last year was amazing for us. We extended our in-depth coverage on foreign destinations, primarily the South East Asia region. While we grew to double of what we were the previous year, the traction on foreign destinations was even more exciting. www.insightssuccess.in

Talking about the short term plans, we are foreseeing to hit 20 million monthly users very soon. In tandem to that, we are working on new channels of revenue to fuel our growth.

By 2022, we want to be the #1 online travel planning platform globally by achieving the scale of more than 100 Mn people using and engaging on Holidify every month.

About the Leaders Rohit Shroff, an IIT Bombay graduate and the CoFounder of Holidify, leads the product and content strategy at Holidify. He is an avid traveller himself and wants to solve every single pain point faced by travellers around the world through innovation and technology. While Kovid Kapoor, a computer engineer from IIT Bombay, also the Co-Founder, heads the technology and product development at Holidify. His passion for building products that could provide a seamless experience to its users by leveraging cutting-edge technologies has been pivotal in Holidify’s growth to 9 Million monthly users.

Rohit and Kovid came up with Holidify in 2014. With the idea of building an online platform that would let people get travel inspiration and discover new holiday destinations, the duo bootstrapped to build the product and launched it. Since its launch, Holidify is now India’s #1 online travel planning platform with more than 9 million visitors using it every month.

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We help you break out of the monotony of the same vacation spots you have known for years and open in front of you, a world of possibilities. With our interactive map interface and powerful filters, you can plan your vacation like never before.

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Pay4Biz

A Preferred Platform for B2B Retailers

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he travel and tourism industry has evolved exponentially over the past few years. Also, It has been observed that there is a 30 percent growth in the industry, making it one of the most profitable for investing.

However, a large chunk of people from metros and mini-metros have been contributing significantly to this rising demand.

Tier 2 and 3 markets are driving the travel growth story. After the boom of the digital world, tremendous opportunities have been opened to upscale the market and help customers reap its many benefits. One company with an agenda of providing online travel technology at a single platform with competitive rates, specifically designed for this market is Pay4Biz. Pay4Biz is a travel technology startup, working towards building an easy to use platform. It allows B2B retailers to book travel tickets along with recharges, money transfer and utility payments all under a single panel.

The Inception Story Before taking on the market, the Pay4Biz team set to identify the industry gaps. With thorough market research, they realized that many service providers in a similar space.

But most of them lacked somewhere in technology while others lacked in postsales support. Hence, the team started on their venture to build a solution for the client's customers. This would help

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the clients to provide their customers right from getting them onboard to resolving their queries. It is for this reason, Pay4Biz claims today that they have an exceptional network of retailers and white label partners across India within a short span of time.

and market’s requirements and needed a few fix-ups. Mr. Shaikh wanted to build a platform that is customercentric rather than profit-centric and its then that the idea of starting his own venture, Pay4Biz was born.

Out-of-the-Box thinking

Tailored-made Services Pay4Biz works towards its vision of creating business opportunities for people from all sectors in PAN India along with promoting digitization in rural and niche markets. Its B2B platform offers various niche and caters to the metros along with Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities PAN India.

The company supports the Agenda of Ease of Doing Business for Everyone and therefore, always works towards building solutions (Platform) which is easy to understand and use.

Leading with A Burning Desire For some people, it takes time to find their passion. For them, taking the first step towards their career help them realize what their real calling is. Mr. Ali Shaikh, Founder of Pay4Biz, is one such business leader who discovered his passion in the Online Travel Industry after working as an Online Sales Asst. Manager in a company.

He realized that there were few things that need to be improved and improvised according to the clients’

At Pay4Biz, its expert staff is committed to deliver the quality product even when the odds seem not in their favor. Learning from mistakes is encouraged as it allows the team to experiment and help to bring value each day.

Mr. Shaikh, himself stated that he wasn’t capable of handling a team at the beginning. However, he learned through constant exploration and diverse ways, which has helped him to become a renowned industry leader he is today. In his own words, “We are cool in our approach, we encourage people putting forward their suggestions for the betterment of product and organization. There is no boss and employee thing. We are all a Team at the end of the day. And that’s how we motivate ourselves and each other. We make mistakes, we find solutions, we fix them, we learn new ways, we unleash our potentials and that motivates us” Continuous Innovation According to Pay4Biz, the B2B marketplace in Tier 2 and 3 is unstructured and cluttered. Also,

www.insightssuccess.in

India’s

1

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Travel

Tech Companies To Watch-2020

needs of the consumer then you cannot question the time or the circumstances, the industry is facing.”

A Promising Future Pay4Biz desires to continuously develop innovative solutions that will uplift the online travel industry. It has already built a calendar for 2020-21 which will focus on product development.

The company is planning to grow its team to provide realtime resolutions to the queries along with a smoother operational experience. This will not only elevate the people working in the industry but will help them to serve their customers with the best tools at their disposal.

Mr. Ali Shaikh Founder

building trust and confidence in a market that’s unaddressed is difficult. It makes it even worse as the digitalization is still at a nascent stage. However, Pay4Biz is working towards building and educating these markets and encouraging the people to start the business with minimum investment.

Mr. Shaikh has confidence that with Pay4Biz, the shortage of optimum technology in the market will soon be fulfilled.

He says, “I have a strong faith that we will get there soon and moreover if you believe your product is answering the

Visit www.pay4biz.com to know more.

“

“We believe a person is a lot more capable than what he or she thinks of.”

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www.insightssuccess.in

31 | February 2020

Virtual Real y The Future of Travel and Tourism

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www.insightssuccess.in

Time Travel

E

ver felt like looking at the world from the top of Mt. Everest and the very next moment diving deep into the Great Barrier Reef? But, this is far beyond reality. It burns the pockets to travel from one place to another and even if you are wealthy enough to afford it, you will be exhausted after a point. However, today, as the world has been taken over by technological advancement, travel and tourism has been performing like never before.

With the rise in use of augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR), the entire universe is revolutionizing. It was not long ago when AR gained popularity in India. Since then, AR and VR are being used in various domains including healthcare, finance and military. But, the most affirmative impact has been seen in the travel and tourism sphere.

What’s AR and VR? Before we get into the interesting changes brought by AR and VR technology, let us understand what AR and VR actually are.

According to Google, Augmented Reality (AR) is defined as “A technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on a user's view of the real world, thus providing a composite view” and Virtual reality (VR) is “the computer-generated simulation of a threedimensional image or environment that can be interacted with in a seemingly real or physical way by a person using special electronic equipment, such as a helmet with a screen inside or gloves fitted with sensors.”

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35 | February 2020

VR in Travel and Tourism Having said that, VR now has made the lives of tourists extremely easy. Due to the emergence of virtual tourism, tourists now can explore the locations through their mobile phones and computers. Imagine you want to fly over the Statue of Liberty or you want to lay down in an igloo and witness the beauty of northern lights. Now, it’s just one touch away!

Basically, VR in travel and tourism is placing people in heavily managed, artificial environments. To give a real feel, technology is further enhanced by adding elements like music, sound effects, floor plans, etc.

Today, the VR technology in the travel and hospitality space is being used to generate a huge profit to the companies. VR lets you virtually inspect your accommodation which helps you choose your stay better. A very famous example is of Thomas Cook and Samsung Gear VR where they have tied-up together to allow their clients to view their locations worldwide. Thomas Cook’s ‘Try Before you Fly’ is another example where the campaign helped then uplift the bookings by 190%. This campaign provided a virtual tour for its customers like flying in a helicopter over the Manhattan skyline, scuba diving in the Red Sea, or visiting the Egyptian pyramids from one of their stores.

Talking about VR tourism in specific countries, Australia has been using this technology for a while now to attract tourists from all over the world. Their youtube channel provides the user with the thrilling 360° aquatic and coastal experience. From snorkelling at Great Barrier Reef, swimming with dolphins at Glenelg to surfing on the Gold Coast, Australia has taken the travel and tourism industry to a new level.

Another famous location which gets the most number of visitors is Dubai. It is known to be leading the tourism market and virtual tours look furthermore exciting. AR and VR for tourism marketing in Dubai had started way before it had come to India. Going back to the end of 2017, Burj Khalifa and HTC collaborated to create a campaign called ‘Mission 828’. In this campaign, the tourists with the help of VR could jump off from the world’s tallest tower! Since then, the use of VR has been attracting a good number of tourists to Dubai.

Apart from experiencing the tourist worthy location, VR now has been unravelling the secrets from the past.

People now can get a better understanding of mythology and folklore. Speaking of which, Denmark, which has a great significance of its nordic culture, is planning on exhibiting Viking history and Norse mythology through VR into a permanent theme park. While on the other hand, China lets you experience a rollercoaster ride that sends chills down the spine through its specialized VR technology.

Into the Future Indeed, numerous travel companies, airlines, hotels and all the major hospitality departments are taking advantage of the emerging VR technology. There is no doubt this technology will provide some relief to the tourists as it will help them to get a virtual experience before landing to the location. Perhaps, VR will encourage people to travel to places even more. It will eventually help the travel and tourism space increase its revenue.

So to sum up, we would like to ask you a question. Do you think virtual reality will take the place of real-life travel experience?

-Shambhavi Mhetre

36 | February 2020

www.insightssuccess.in

Technogram

Spearheading Online Travel Businesses towards Success

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ith the advancement in technology, the tourism industry around the world is growing at an astonishing rate. A recent report from India Brand Equity Foundation says that the travel and tourism industry contributed 9.6% to India’s GDP in 2018.

In the current era, the tourism industry is not just limited to travel, leisure and business. Rather, it has vast branches which include medical tourism, educational tourism, environmental tourism and so on. While technology is helping the tourism industry gain momentum, it also has its own glitches.

Hence, Technogram Solutions is lending a helping hand to provide technological solutions to various travel websites. Currently, the B2B market is a cash-driven setup that makes a great niche to work with. But, due to the funding issue, people opt for B2C businesses.

Technogram is helping such B2B companies to reach out to as many people as possible. It ensures that end to end solutions are provided by enhancing the accessibility and searchability.

The company ensures that the endusers receive quick and accurate search results from the clientele website. A travel website should be more than just a tool. Rather it should be a platform

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for selling products and services.

The Pillars of Technogram Ashu Gupta and Sanjay Khurana are the Co-Founders of Technogram.

Ashu has completed his Masters in Computer Science and is an IIT Roorkee alumnus. His career started from Trilogy and went on to various well-known travel companies like Via.com.

Overall, Ashu has an experience of 9 years of which the last 4 years were dedicated as Engineering Director of India and Southeast Asian Countries.

Having worked for almost a decade, he understands the problems faced by the travel and tourism industry. That is when he and Sanjay came up with the idea of providing cost-effective and scalable technological solutions in the face of Technogram.

On the other hand, Sanjay has a Masters degree in Computer Science and is an IP University alumnus. He has 9 years of experience in IT out of which last 6 years was in Jabong with the last 2 years working as a Principal Engineer. Through his experience, he understood how a user navigates and interacts with the product.

Customer Oriented Services Technogram provides a wide range of services to its clients to enhance the

inflow of the website traffic. Apart from generating leads, it also provides different tools which enable the endusers to browse smoothly. This makes Technogram’s products a one-stopshop for all the travel requirements.

Ashu mentions, “We believe that a travel website should be more than just a tool for e-commerce, rather than a platform for selling products and services, a travel website should be used as a method to create customer engagement and create a lasting relationship on a global level.”

The clients of the Technogram can choose different features and tools depending on their requirements. Some of the planned features apart from basic functionality are: • Agent Interaction tool • Google voice to text search • Best option recommendation based on search history • Price prediction • Self Booking Tool • Corporate Tool • Low Fare Search for Corporate • Payment solutions • Business Intelligence to make datadriven decision • Social media integration to share experience and make a recommendation Furthermore, Technogram also provides responsive design capabilities

www.insightssuccess.in

India’s

1

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Travel

Tech Companies To Watch-2020

solutions, personalization and handling scalability and complexity. Such B2B companies face problems as keeping up with technological updates becomes difficult. With Technogram’s solutions, most of the complexity is incorporated in the system so that the client will face minimum problems.

Future Endeavors In the tourism industry, customization of services becomes an essential part. Each customer has their own needs and requirements. Technogram is keeping its customer satisfaction level high through constant improvement.

Ashu Gupta and Sanjay Khurana Co-Founders

The company is building a complex rule engine that will help customization according to customer needs. It is also on a mission to provide cutting edge strategies and technology solutions for customers and partners in order to penetrate into the global market.

that will allow more dynamic aesthetics and integration with mobile devices. This will enable an engaging, easy to navigate web experience while emphasizing on the product and service than the website itself.

Technogram’s Contribution According to Technogram, the travel and tourism industry is growing 20-30% on a yearly basis. In recent times, customers are opting for both, domestic and international travel. In order to cater services to these travelers, agents need solutions that can help them to answer their queries quickly.

But, the travel and tourism industry lack technology initiatives. It also lacks a data-driven approach, customized

www.insightssuccess.in

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We have build scalable and costeffective Business tools which will provide insight about business to every user.

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Though Technogram’s major clients are from the B2B industry, the solutions and offers are for all kinds of business (B2C, B2B, B2E). “Today, our technology is supporting the business of over more than 2000 cr of transactions. We believe in a philosophy that response time should be less than 3 sec and we are successfully able to achieve this in both flight and hotel product,” adds Ashu.

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