Technology continues to innovate how travellers are preparing for and enjoying their journeys, or how hotels are adapting to their guests’ changing preferences. So far, there has been much hype around travel disruptors such as Airbnb and Uber. However, the continual foray of tech giants into the travel space is what should be grabbing our attention right now.

Competition is actually coming in now from big technology players. The huge growth potential in the online travel space, particularly in Asia-Pacific, is attracting their attention.

Take the case of Google and Alibaba, who are already very much in the travel space. Combine the search engine giant’s complex algorithm with its products like Google Flights, Google Hotel Finder and Google Trips, and you will see how the company is slowly and steadily climbing up the trip-planning funnel. In the $2.3 trillion contributed to the global economy by travel and tourism, Google already has a large share of the pie. The company has been developing travel tools in the last four years, and is even starting to make them official. For instance, Google Flights came out way back in 2011, but they re-designed and launched the tool only in 2015, replete with exciting new features. The company has now made it easier for users to check out important hotel details such as rates, locations and reviews. Google users can also book some hotels directly while searching for particular properties. Moreover, when a user types in a query for a particular destination, Google also displays a list at the top of the page that provides travellers information about popular sightseeing locations.

Image source: Gravity Flow

Alibaba’s Fliggy is not far behind. The company recently announced a joint venture partnership with Marriott International to redefine the travel experience for the hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers traveling abroad and domestically every year. The joint venture will leverage Marriott International’s global portfolio of brands and unparalleled hospitality expertise to revolutionize the travel experience as well as Alibaba’s digital retail leadership and its role as a gateway for international brands to reach over 500 million mobile monthly active users across its platforms. Drawing on resources from both Marriott and Alibaba, the joint venture will manage Marriott’s storefront on Fliggy, Alibaba’s travel service platform. It will also market directly to Alibaba’s customer base, provide a link between Marriott’s loyalty programs and Alibaba’s loyalty program, and support Marriott hotels globally with content, programs and promotions customized for the Chinese traveller.

We can also see non-traditional travel actors in payments space or general online retailing, like the Amazons of the world, developing the travel component. Closer home, Paytm is an example. On the back of raising $1.4 billion from SoftBank, Paytm is making aggressive moves to challenge existing players in verticals like travel and hotels with the help of deep discounts.

And we will keep seeing many others in the space, too. Travel is a very interesting space for many of them as it is accessible for anyone who has online retailing experience. There is definitely a good basis to build a travel marketplace then. Moreover, considering that companies like Apple and Google already own 90 per cent of the mobile ecosystem, it allows these tech giants to easily capture travel data and get insights on what they’re looking for. Plus, the tech companies are heavily leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence to draw insights from that data in real time to create optimized results.

Calling attention to the areas that are broken in the current systems is precisely what tech companies are now doing. This, however, does not spell doom for the traditional players. In fact, with tech giants attacking weaknesses, it gives the industry an opportunity to wake up and think about change, thus making them more open to the adoption of new technology. And that is always going to be a win-win for everyone.

The post How non-travel players are foraying into the travel space appeared first on TravHQ.

Paytm is reportedly looking to acquire Noida-based last-minute hotel booking app, NightStay, for around $20 million. The development was confirmed by NightStay founder Nasr Khan in a news report by VCCircle.

NightStay was started by Nasr Khan in December 2014 with a basic alpha app. The beta version of the product was announced in March 2015. The idea behind NightStay was to create a platform that can provide instant hotel bookings for travellers while assuring a high quality of service and hygiene.

NighStay offers hotels an open and flexible option to provide flash accessibility on its app. They can make their inventories available on the NightStay app, which is available from 12:00 noon till 12:00 midnight, and increase their footfall while maintaining their brand identity.

The startup is present in cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Goa, Chennai, and Hyderabad. It raised a $500K funding in August 2015 from BedRock Ventures and angel investors Rajesh Sawhney of GSF and Shailesh Vickram Singh, a partner at SeedFund.
According to reports, the Paytm’s acquisition of NightStay signals the digital payments company’s foray into the hospitality space.

The NightStay acquisition is a step ahead in this direction for Paytm. In May, Paytm had acquired Chennai-based online ticketing platform TicketNew to boost its entertainment arm.

Earlier this month, it invested $8.95 million (INR 61 Crore) in Entertainment armand also gave its Paytm Inbox users access to free in-app content across categories such as Live TV, News, Cricket, Entertainment Videos, and Games on the go. In July 2017, Paytm also acquired a majority stake in Insider.in, an events ticketing platform, to tap into the rapidly growing live entertainment space in India.

The post Paytm To Acquire Last-Minute Hotel Booking Startup NightStay appeared first on TravHQ.

Paytm has acquired majority stake in Mumbai based online ticketing and events platform Insider.in. The platform allows its users to discover and book events and activities across many cities in India. Insider is operated by OML which also runs and owns the intellectual rights to popular music festival Bacardi NH7 Weekender.

This will give Paytm customers access to the listings on Insider. It not only features local events but also activities making it a suitable extension to the Paytm travel business. Insider founder Shreyas Srinivasan will continue to run the business while OML founders Vijay Nair and Ajay Nair will continue to be stakeholders and will remain on the advisory board.

Madhur Deora, Chief Financial Officer and SVP- Paytm commented, “Events discovery and ticket booking is a challenge for customers and organizers alike. We are excited to partner with Insider to help our users discover and book tickets. We believe that digital discovery and events marketing expertise will increase supply of quality events in India.”

“From the first meeting with Vijay Shekhar Sharma and Madhur, we realized that Paytm was a perfect partner for Insider. We are excited to join forces with them and build out the best event discovery and ticketing experience in India” said OML Founder Vijay Nair.

While adding more value for Insider, the deal also adds another piece fuelling the horizontal expansion of Paytm. Taking a hint from the success of its Chinese investor, Paytm is creating a wide ecommerce ecosystem and this deal brings vertical expertise without building from scratch. It will also complement the travel vertical as it adds local discovery service right where the customers are able to book their travel. The fact that payment is seamlessly integrated into all their services further makes it easier for them to drive usage for new products and services through the same platform. Expect more developments to strengthen the individual verticals as Paytm continues its horizontal expansion to compete against multiple etailers and OTAs.

The post Paytm strengthens local discovery vertical, acquires majority stake in Insider.in appeared first on TravHQ.

As a startup founder (in my second innings now), I recall hearing what can’t be done (because of some archaic regulation or protectionist policy) more often than what is allowed under the rule of law. Sometimes, these chains weigh in on the mind so much that they prevent innovation and original thinking, and at best, your idea becomes a ‘me too’ of a global precedent in your chosen field (which investors seem to love, by the way).

Although still figuring out the right way to innovate at my new venture (within the rule of law), I’m glad it has nothing to do with anything I’ve done in the past and I’m happy to get to work every day to try and challenge (read trying to circumvent) most guidelines that have been made by the authorities in some of the most heavily regulated industries (Foreign Exchange, Insurance & Telecom) we have in India and also across the world.

Multiple times, I’ve seen global startups popping up in various countries evangelizing an innovation that we had to abandon because of a certain regulation, only to feel good about being on the right track and thinking that our time too shall come.

These are times in the developing world where one tends to leapfrog from Innovation A straight away to Innovation C (like we did in India from Desktop to Mobile, skipping laptops), changing behaviors and creating a massive impact like never before. From spending about USD 1000 on a desktop 10 years back, one can get a more powerful smartphone now within USD 100 (well, USD 4 if we talk about Ringing Bells!). Imagine all that computing power in a six billion palms worldwide in a few years.

India is a billion mobile phone user market, but think about how many Indian firms were able to take advantage of this? Had the Indian electronic manufacturing sector been able to grow to fulfil the needs of the Indian consumer, Apple would already be manufacturing in India and they’d do it out of simple economic considerations (right now, we’re bending backwards to try and get them to come, but they politely decline each time because our current eco system won’t be able to cater to their needs).

A similar leapfrogging is quite possible in currencies, heck, it’s already happening, India and Africa are skipping plastic and straight away going from cash to digital (hello, Bitcoin!) on a massive scale (recall the PayTM karo ads for making payments to the local kirana and the auto-wallah)! While we can think about our wallets (and all that plastic) going away, one can hardly fathom the thought of parting with their phone. This emotion portends the future quite tellingly and it’s just a matter of time when we’ll be using our phones to pay at NFC (or some other cool sounding wireless tech) enabled POS terminals at retail stores around us, using the in-built (Aadhar linked?) fingerprint scanner for authentication instead of the somewhat cumbersome OTP/ PIN based authentication we currently have.

As a startup operating in this space, we keenly look out for developments on currency regulation and although UPI will be a big game changer on the payments front (kudos to the RBI for taking the lead on that), in the currencies space, what will decide whether the next blockchain/ currency startup will be founded in New Delhi or London won’t be the availability of the talent pool, but the policy route taken by the lawmakers and how heavy (or light) they’d keep the regulations for such digital transactions. The decision to be made is whether we want to encourage building a nation of innovators and challengers of status quo, or are we simply going to wait patiently for a disruptor from the west (or shall I say, knight in shining armour) to come and give them a ready market of a billion people on a platter. The time is NOW…

Author

Rishabh Sood, CEO & Co-founder @YuMiGo, is currently working on his second venture which is at core a travel tech startup with a strong fintech angle. He completed his Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering and Master’s in Financial Engineering from NYU Tandon as an Honors Student before moving back to his hometown of New Delhi. Post NYU, he started off in a space that was very close to his heart and built a venture in renewables, scaling up to revenues of USD 2 million and a team of 50, before deciding to move on due to heavy capital requirements and very little differentiation from the competition, searching for a space where he could make a 10x impact.

The post Disruption in India – unlock the handcuffs to let enterprises bloom appeared first on TravHQ.

TravelTriangle has announced its partnership with Paytm to integrate its payment wallet on the website and mobile site. This would facilitate cashless payments on the go. The travellers would be able to leverage new age benefits of the new age payment options and continue with their faster buying experience.

Established in 2011 as an online holiday marketplace based out of Noida, Uttar Pradesh. The company is a brainchild of three IIT alumni- Sankalp Agarwal (IIT Kharagpur), Sanchit Garg (IIT Bombay), Prabhat Gupta (IIT Guwahati). TravelTriangle connects travellers with safe, reliable, local and verified holiday planners in various destinations around the world.

Commenting on the association, Abhinna Suresh Khare, AVP – Marketing, TravelTriangle, said, “Digital wallets deliver security and user experience to a traveller and is termed as the future of payments. The adoption has been a challenge due to the issue of trust but Paytm has successfully solved it – especially at a low ticket purchase. We at TravelTriangle believe that for any business, the micro-moment when a customer makes payment is the validation of their trust in the services, and with Paytm wallet we aim to deliver and further strengthen the offering to our customers. This tie up affirms our commitment to provide value to our customer experience.”

The company had raised Series A fund of $1.7 million from SAIF Partners in 2014. In April 2015, Silicon Valley venture fund Bessemer Venture Partners led an $8 million second financing round in TravelTriangle. And, since then, TravelTriangle has been growing at a rapid pace.

Adding more to the partnership, he said “As the most widely used mobile wallet in the country, Paytm’s integration with TravelTriangle will provide an established option of payment to the travellers booking holidays with us. Till now, the customers could pay only through EMI, Credit/Debit card and Net Banking. With the Paytm wallet integration we will be adding one more set of customers to our operations along with offering an additional means of payment to our existing and new customers. We are expanding as a service and are constantly improvising our offerings to take more such worthwhile strides in the future to make holiday planning easier for travellers.”

Offering value to its customers and to announce this partnership, Paytm and TravelTriangle have started the offer of 10% Cashback on its site for all trips booked during the tenure. So now travellers can enjoy extra benefits when they choose Paytm wallet as the payment option.

The USP of the company is its personalised approach, intelligent product and reliable fulfilment.In addition to this, the company has served 5 lakh travellers and reaches out to 60+ destinations & the happiness quotient is reflected in the 95.09% positive customer reviews.

The post TravelTriangle incorportes Paytm wallet to facilitate cashless payments appeared first on TravHQ.

FreeCharge, the digital payment service, has announced a new partnership with one of the leading OTAs, Cleartrip. The company claims that post this association, the travellers will be able to pay for their bookings including hotels, flights and trains using FreeCharge in under 10 seconds.

Snapdeal owned FreeCharge introduced the digital wallet last year in association with YES Bank and we have seen many other brands move in the space since then. Even Ola Cabs introduced Ola Wallet as a standalone app which earlier used to be a payment option only for the cab service.

Starting with mobile recharges and bill payments, FreeCharge has associations in 15 different sectors and this is the first time the brand has forged a partnership in travel space. Commenting on the same, FreeCharge COO, Govind Rajan said,

“After carving a mark across 15 sectors, we have now forayed into the travel space with this partnership. Cleartrip has transformed the habit of consumers online travel bookings by being a one-stop shop for all their needs. With this tie-up, FreeCharge will take this experience a step further, providing consumers with a means to complete their transactions on the-the-go, at a lightning speed. We are moving towards building an ecosystem for merchants to make consumers’ daily payments frictionless and convenient.”

The new partnership will not only help the brand give the digital wallet a boost but also help in increasing the use of FreeCharge as a payment mode for other partners with increased adoption. However, one of the strongest rivals, PayTM already works with multiple travel companies to offer their services through its platform and facilitate payments. So not only is PayTM offering wallet services to them but also working towards becoming the one stop shop for everything, including travel bookings. At this point, it appears that PayTM has the edge but it will be interesting to see how the FreeCharge-Cleartrip association plays out. It is worth a mention that Cleartrip recently associated with FreeCharge’s parent company Snapdeal to enable bookings through the e-commerce site.

Source: FirstPost

The post FreeCharge enters travel space to challenge PayTM appeared first on TravHQ.

Jugnoo, the auto-rickshaw aggregator service raised another $10 million from the e-commerce and digital wallet Paytm in series B round of fundraising. The Chandigarh-based start-up raised $10 million in a Series-B1 round from Vishal Shekhar-Sharma led company last October.

Image: Auto Rickshaw by dwimalu/ CC BY 2.0)

The auto-rickshaw hailing and hyperlocal delivery mobile app received 5 million from Paytm and remaining from the existing investors like Snow Leopard and a new one named Rocketship.vc. The aggregator operates in more than 30 cities and 11 villages across the country. It faces stiff competition from Softbank-backed Ola which has crawled to overall 24 cities in total. This move is an incentive to draw more auto-rickshaw drivers and keep them. It also targets on planning expansion.

“We have been receiving a phenomenal response from drivers who are now readily adopting technology as a means of increasing their daily earnings. We will invest these funds in improving our driver efficiency and increasing our numbers in cities where we are currently in the growing phase. And with the kind of impact we have been able to make at the grass roots, I am sure we have a long way to go,”

said Samar Singla, chief executive officer and co-founder, Jugnoo.

Paytm Senior Vice President Visareddy expressed that the aggregator service has picked up a lot of traction with this business model and creating disruption in public transportation ecosystem.

“With further infusion of funds, Jugnoo will be equipped to scale up its operations across the country and Paytm is happy to be a part of its growth story,”

With this investment, Paytm has got exposure to online aggregator businesses as well. The company has businesses in digital and e-commerce wallet and has been awarded a payment bank licence by Reserve Bank of India.

According to industry numbers, in 2016 year-to-date (YTD), there have been 22 venture capital (VC) funding rounds in India’s internet market, of which only five rounds have been Series-A/B.

“The rest have been either seed/venture stage or big-ticket late-stage funding rounds in more established companies. There were no Series-A/B rounds in the month of March. The quantum of money that has flowed in YTD still remains strong at a billion dollars, helped by large $100-million plus funding rounds, each for CarTrade, Shopclues, Snapdeal and Bigbasket,”

Morgan Stanley said in a recent report.

Source: Business Standard

The post Jugnoo raised another $10 million in Series- B funding round led by Paytm and others appeared first on TravHQ.

Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation is well-known for changing the face of the railway ticketing in India. It has laid the groundwork for internet-based railway ticket booking through its website. This year IRCTC has been an exceptionally active player in the travel industry.

(Image: Electric locomotive of Indian Railways by Shan H Fernandes)

Over the past few months, IRCTC has tied up with innumerable indian and international brands to further enhance its business and fulfil the requirements of the travellers. Let us go through a few of them below:

 YatraGenie

Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation collaborated with YatraGenie – a Bengaluru-based online bus ticketing and cab-booking platform. Through this tie-up, YatraGenie offers cab services to the passengers from Secundarabad station. This gives the liberty to the passengers to book cabs at the last minute from the station and reach their respective destinations with absolute ease.

 MobiKwik and Paytm

MobiKwik offers an instant one-tap payment method for ticket bookings. The users can carry out seamless online payments from the retailer’s platform with no redirection to the app. It has tied up with Paytm to make e-catering payment an easy option for the travellers.

Amazon and Mydala

IRCTC tied up with Amazon to provide the convenient online shopping experience to its customers. Through the app, the passengers are offered a variety of products ranging from consumer electronics to musical instruments. In the similar category, they joined hands with Mydala to provide deals and offers across categories like health and wellness, tattoos and retail shopping to its customers.

 KFC and Dominos

Recently, IRCTC has also associated with leading fast-food chains like KFC and Dominos. Currently, IRCTC provides an e-catering facility in 1516 trains without pantry cars.The KFC and Dominos services are available in trains running via New Delhi Railway Station. Passengers can place their orders through the IRCTC website or call on a toll-free number.  It is also planning to collaborate with food aggregators like Subway and Pizza Hut.

Foodpanda and Hello Curry

IRCTC has connected with many food tech startups in the past few months. A few of them include Foodpanda and Hello Curry. With these tie-ups, the two food tech startups have enabled the passengers to order from a variety of cuisine options during their travel. Foodpanda provides customers with the choice to order meals a few hours before their travel. The Foodpanda services are available currently only in Delhi whereas Hello Curry offers wholesome healthy meal options to passengers boarding different trains at Secunderbad station.

GoAir and Spicejet

IRCTC associated with the GoAir and Spicejet to assist train travellers with wait-listed tickets to book flight tickets by charging an incremental fee. The passengers get an opportunity to avail  tickets at a lower price as compared to standard price rates. Interested people can book flight tickets three days prior to their travel date, after cancelling their train tickets.

In this year, IRCTC has been seen joining hands with many players in different verticals to assist the travellers through its widely-available services.

Related Article: Foodpanda partners with IRCTC to offer food in trains

The post How IRCTC tied up with Indian and International brands to assist the travellers appeared first on TravHQ.

Website and app based food delivery service Foodpanda is associating with IRCTC, subsidiary of Indian Railways that handles catering, tourism and online ticketing. Under this partnership, Foodpanda wants to allow passengers to order food from Foodpanda partner restaurants during their train journey.

A pilot program of this proposed association will be launched in New Delhi. No timelines have been defined yet but after rolling out in New Delhi, they will extend the service in more cities. The customers will have to order their food two hours in advance and pay using the online or cash payment options.

Commenting on this development, Robin Kalita, Director, Catering Services, IRCTC, said, “At IRCTC, it has been our endeavour to extend best possible services to our passengers. Food forms a very important part of the travel experience and IRCTC takes immense care to offer healthy and hygienic food to its travellers on-board. We are happy that we will be able to offer wider food choices to our consumers with this association and once our pilot project is successful, we will extend the service to more locations.”

Foodpanda, along with its partner brands JustEat and Tastykhana, has got large number of restaurant partners spread over 200+ cities. They will be able to offer a wide variety of food options to the travellers. Presence across wide geographies will help them expand the service quickly after the pilot.

“Our association with IRCTC will be an offering which addresses a huge consumer need prevailing for years. For long, consumers had limited food options to choose from while travelling with Indian railways but the newly launched e-catering service by IRCTC (approved by Ministry of Railways) is set to change the way Indians eat while travelling,” Foodpanda CEO Saurabh Kochhar said.

Foodpanda was founded in 2012 by Ralf Wenzel and Benjamin Bauer and recently raised USD 100 Million in latest round of funding led by Goldman Sachs. There are multiple startups that offer food delivery in trains (Read: Five startups that will help you get better food during your train journey).

IRCTC has been working hard to improve the customer experience with Indian Railways. For this they have improved on many fronts and partnered with businesses like Paytm for payments and mydala to offer deals to travellers. These associations will go a long way in helping IRCTC improve the customer experience.

The post Foodpanda partners with IRCTC to offer food in trains appeared first on TravHQ.

Paytm, an Indian e-commerce website established in 2010, had launched its travel business starting with bus tickets in December last year. The company had tied up with several travel aggregators to cover almost all bus routes on its system. With almost 100% growth, it has already established its presence in the market space. To accelerate this growth exponentially, Abhishek Rajan – a senior executive of Myntra – will soon be heading the travel segment of Paytm. He will join the firm as the Vice-President this week.

(Read: Paytm to offer hotel bookings on its platform)

With the aim to make the travel segment the fastest $10 billion category for the brand, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the founder and CEO of One97/Paytm, shared his thoughts about the new appointment of Abhishek Rajan at Paytm:

“We look at businesses that will help us to be profitable, and there is a lot of incumbency in the online travel segment in India. Abhishek, with his experience, is the right person to lead our efforts.”

This is not the first time Abhishek Rajan, an alumnus of IIM (Ahmedabad), has associated with One97 Communications – the parent company of Paytm. He played an important role in setting up the company’s digital payments and e-commerce business before quitting the brand to join Flipkart in 2012. He has more than 10 years of experience across verticals like e-commerce, digital payments, technology and business consulting, financial advisory and consumer internet.

Abhishek Rajan

The primary goal of Paytm will be to ramp up hiring for the travel category while simultaneously fighting for transparency and utilizing the mobile platform. Eventually, as the business grows, it will start signing up hotels and travel agents on the platform.

Elaborating on senior-level appointments, many new firms demand corporate affairs professionals from well-established businesses. As a result of this, many senior level appointments have taken place in the past few months. Housing.com had appointed Reliance’s Nikhil Rungta as its CMO and Ola had poached Flipkart’s head of corporate affairs Joy Bandekar. Initially, Flipkart, the largest e-commerce company, Snapdeal, India’s largest online marketplace and the online food ordering company Zomato had also included almost all their senior leadership from conglomerates like Unilever and Airtel.

With Abhishek Rajan joining the firm, Paytm aims to grow at a faster pace. His in-depth knowledge and experience of more than ten years in e-commerce coupled with strategic skills will be highly useful for the brand.

The post Abhishek Rajan of Myntra will soon head the travel unit of Paytm appeared first on TravHQ.