The news coming from all over the world keeps on getting interesting. The highlight of this month was the first ever Phocuswright event in India and now their team is gearing up for the next event in Europe. In other news, Facebook introduced some new interesting tools that travel brands can leverage and the fight between cab aggregators and regulators over surge pricing continues in India. In case you missed them over the month, here are the top stories from the month of April:

1- QuadLabs Technologies won the first APAC Travel Innovator of the Year at Phocuswright India

QuadLabs Technologies won at the highly acclaimed Travel Innovation Summit at Phocuswright India for their new travel management platform Travog. Self-drive car rental company Myles was the runner up. Audio Compass won the People’s Choice and Amadeus Next award.

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2- Android Auto arrived in India

Google earlier introduced its in-car infotainment system called Android Auto and recently introduced it in 18 new countries including India. It can simplify a large number of in-car controls by bringing familiar Android interface to your car and using the data from your device. Travel brands can explore the possibilities and make the best out of Android Auto.

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3- Here is what Facebook F8 had for travel brands

During the recently concluded Facebook F8 Developer conference, Facebook had a lot to offer. At this year’s event, they announced APIs for live video, Instant Articles for everyone, chat bots for Messenger and an open source project for VR videos.

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4- Regulators vs cab companies again on surge pricing

After being in news for fighting against each other, the cab companies are now in the crosshair of various state governments. Indian state of Karnataka announced a ban on surge pricing and Delhi followed. Uber started campaigning against the same with personalised mails being sent to users.

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5- YouTube made live videos more interesting

Live videos were kicked off by Periscope but now YouTube and Facebook seem to be the favourite platform for live. Now with 360 degree cameras getting affordable, YouTube has gone a step further and introduced 360 degree live videos. This will not only add a new format but also attract more young tech savvy users to the platform.

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6- LeEco showcases electric driverless car

LeEco, a relatively less known mobile manufacturer from China and an investor in Faraday Future, has showcased an electric car that is autonomous. Until now, most of the developments in autonomous car technologies were coming from the west but this Chinese company seems to have aimed directly at Tesla.

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7- Highlights from the keynote of Lee McCabe at Phocuswright India

Lee McCabe, Global Head of Travel, Facebook talked about how media consumption is changing and what businesses need to keep in mind to cater to mobile first customers. He shared interesting insights on how mobile is affecting travel industry and where brands are lagging behind.

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8- Airbnb announced ‘Live There’ campaign along with new features

Airbnb recently announced its largest brand campaign called ‘Live There’ to inspire travellers to experience the hospitality of local hosts. Along with the new campaign, they introduced new features including Bespoke Matching for finding suitable rentals, neighbourhood matching and guidebooks.

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9- Raghav Gupta, India Country Manager, BlaBlaCar talks about future of ridesharing in India

Carsharing has recently started to pick up in India as vehicle ownership costs continue to grow and public transport continues to lag. BlaBlaCar, the world’s largest long distance ridesharing company started operations in India only a while back and has been received well by travellers. We speak with Raghav Gupta to know more.

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10- Yogendra Vasupal shares how Stayzilla is driving the trend of homestays in India

Alternative accommodation is a relatively new concept in India and people have started opening up to the idea only recently. Stayzilla is one brand that is heavily investing its efforts to drive this change. Yogendra Vasupal, CEO, Stayzilla shared more details about how it is being done.

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The post April 2016 round-up: Smarter cars and simpler transport appeared first on TravHQ.

February was an exciting month for us. We came back after three exciting days at SATTE 2016 and soon after, we hosted the first Startup Knockdown successfully in association with OTM Mumbai and are now looking forward to the next one in Mumbai. This month also saw some major investments in travel space. Like always, we also learned about some really interesting travel startups and shared them with you. In case you missed, here are our top stories from this month:

#1- Fxkart and Tramily emerge as winners at first Travel Startup Knockdown

In the first Travel Startup Knockdown, Fxkart was selected to be the winner by our panel of judges. Fxkart simplifies the process of foreign exchange for international travellers by connecting them to reliable forex dealers. Tramily was picked as people’s choice at Startup Knockdown. It is a platform that connects travel agents to hoteliers easily through a website or mobile app.

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#2- ibibo group to receive USD 240 million funding from Naspers

ibibo, the parent company of popular OTA Goibibo will be receiving a funding of USD 250 million from existing stakeholder Naspers. The group not only operates the popular OTA but also runs B2B travel platform TravelBoutiqueOnline, bus booking service Redbus and budget hotel chain Gostays. The latest funds will be used by the company to develop new technologies to enhance the products.

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#3- Zendrive raises USD 13.5 million to make car travel safer

Zendrive offers analytics on the driving patterns to offer a quality score. It doesn’t require any hardware and relies on the sensors in mobile phone of the driver to generate the data. Zendrive is available through SDK and can be embedded with various apps. The technology holds huge potential and the participation of major automobile companies in this round is a strong indicator of the same.

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#4- Shouut is the only app you will need for local discovery

In a time when we have a separate app for everything from discovering activities to booking hotels, Shouut comes in as one app that has it all. It seamlessly stiches together food & drink, nightlife shopping, leisure & outdoor and travel & stay giving the user an app that has it all. Giant Tech Labs, the company behind this interesting product has recently raised seed funding of USD 500K to further develop the product.

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#5- Softbank confirms the acquisition of ZO Rooms by OYO Rooms

Softbank finally put the rumours of the acquisition of ZO Rooms by OYO Rooms by confirming the same. Tiger Global backed ZO Rooms was the strongest competitor to OYO Rooms but was facing challenges after failing to raise subsequent rounds from its investors. The deal went through with ZO Rooms founders and investors getting 7 percent stakes in OYO Rooms.

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#6- Phocuswright MD, Tony D’Astolfo talks about their first event in India

Phocuswright is coming to India for the very first time with the theme “The Asian Mojo: Millennials, Mobile, Money, Mania”. We spoke with Tony D’Astolfo, MD, Phocuswright to learn more about the highly anticipated event and the driving factors behind it.

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#7- Volvo plans to redefine car rental industry with its keyless technology

The Swedish car manufacturer Volvo has showcased a new keyless technology that eliminates the need of carrying any kind of car keys and allows unlocking the car using mobile phone. The digital keys can be shared with other users so that the cars can spend more time on the road than sitting in a parking lot. They will be launching a pilot project next year with their rental company Sunfleet.

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The post February 2016 round-up: The best in travel and web appeared first on TravHQ.