“What sort of a person names his motorcycle?” is a question I have faced on at least a dozen occasions. “Someone who considers it to be more than just a tool to go from A to B” is the answer and that is exactly the case with two Enfields, Theia and Laetitia. With Deepak and Vineet, they have travelled to more places than most of us have on our bucket list. And during one of those adventures, the duo (no, not the motorcycles) realised that something should be done to help the others like them.

Deepak and Vineet have been going places on their motorcycles for over 15 years and have together covered around half a million kilometres. Deepak tells that for almost all of these journeys, they were mostly relying on whatever they could learn from their friends. However, he is quick to mention that while it ‘sort of’ worked, the information was half baked at best. Partly because opinions are subjective and partly because it will only be true till when the friend travelled to the region last time.

Vineet and Deepak, Founders, ScoutMyTrip

This inspired them to build a platform to help others road travellers like themselves and ScoutMyTrip entered the picture. A trip planning startup focused at people who like to take the road. Deepak shares that at first they started building something for riding clubs and for the bikers to interact which evolved and shaped up into a roadtrip planner while retaining the strong community element. The reason for widening the focus was because they realised that even outside the biker communities, there is a huge market of users who are taking their vehicles on trips more than ever before. Even the people who are taking flights and trains are opting to get vehicles at their destination to explore easily.

Along with the love for motorcycling, the two founders also carry leadership experiences in various roles. Deepak Ananth, the CEO has been associated with organizations like Tata Communications and Verifone Limited in marketing as well as leadership roles. Vineet Rajan, the CMO at ScoutMyTrip is a marketer with rich content marketing background. He started Indiblogger back in 2007 to mobilise the blogosphere. The duo also actively engages in charity work leading as a part of various motorcycle clubs.

For planning a trip, ScoutMyTrip starts building upon our usual tendency to look up the route on Google Maps. The platform uses a map to visualise the journey but with a wide array of tools to put together a plan. The process is split into five simple steps so that one is not overwhelmed dealing with everything at once. Through these steps, you can select your route, duration of stay, add overnight halts, add petrol pumps, add attractions to visit and the options are tailored depending on your budget and whether you are travelling solo, with friends or with family. The content available on the platform comes from their own sources as well as from the users. The crowdsourced additions are cross checked on multiple levels to ensure reliability.

At this point, close to two third of the ScoutMyTrip users are using desktop browsers to thoroughly plan their trips anywhere between 2 to 15 days in advance. The product is still in beta stage and Deepak claims that what we see right now is only a fraction of what they are building. Among the major additions, first would be an improved picturesque discovery feature of nearby attractions. The second one would be to extend the usability of the platform beyond just planning and booking to include an array of activities across the country.

Apart from these additions, they are working on fine tuning the elements already present on the product. The information about petrol pumps will get more detailed to include different prices across regions, available payment options, availability of premium fuel and timings. This, coupled with the information about restaurants along the route and user’s vehicle range, will be used to suggest suitable stops at the right times. Along with this, the mascot of ScoutMyTrip ‘Roadmatix’ – a siberian husky who loves to travel (and chase his tail), will often be seen around the website and will assume bigger roles to help people plan over chat.

Of course ScoutMyTrip isn’t the only player looking at this space but the number is very small right now. On top of that, the market is huge and there are strong differentiators between these players to give each one of them plenty of headroom to grow.

The platform can be accessed through its desktop and mobile websites at this point. However, the team is working on rolling out an app soon. According to Deepak, the desktop version will still continue to hold its relevance for people who plan in advance and the app will be added to serve as an extension to it.

You can find more details at ScoutMyTrip.com and shoot your feedback at @scoutmytrip.

The post Meet Theia and Laetitia, the machines that inspired the birth of a travel startup appeared first on TravHQ.

The greatest adventure stories ever told never started with someone taking a budget flight or an overnight train. They started on the road. ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’, ‘On the road’, ‘Travels with Charley’, ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’ are some of the best reads about travel and they all have roads as the common denominator.

Step out of the stories and planning a roadtrip in India often starts with Google Maps. We check the route on Google Maps squinting at the screen to figure out if the route goes through some city or not. This is followed by calls to friends and family who may be familiar with the region. If that fails, we turn to Google to see if we can find pieces of information and random travelogues that can be placed together to give a vague idea of what we are getting into. And when you are the one responsible for planning for a bunch of people, it soon turns into a task that can make even superheroes shudder.

We witnessed the entry of many trip planning startups over the past two years and yet, almost all of them are built around the destinations, not the route. They will do a very good job if you are taking a flight or train to your destination and then looking to explore the region but won’t help much if you plan to drive. Certainly the domestic air fares are lower than ever and connectivity improved but it can’t match the freedom of travelling via road, can it? With an increasing aversion to tourist traps and vehicles being more accessible, a large number of travellers are lured towards the roads and new players are entering the landscape to cater to them. Easy Roads is one planning startup trying to cater to these traveller and instead of focussing on what you can or should do at your destination, it is built around the journey.

Sachin, the man behind Easy Roads has worked with leading management consulting and IT companies and was always the kind of person who would hop behind the wheel if you mention the word travel. He would often come up with quirky ideas and activities to keep co-travellers entertained and engaged. In fact, he tells a very interesting narrative of when he got married six year back. The venue selected for the cocktail party was a bit far from the city centre and most of the guests were driving there. To add some flavour to their drive and make it a memorable one, he cooked up a series of challenges the guests had to fulfil on their way by deciphering the hints given to them. This sent them exploring the city from bus stops to food joints to post offices and everything in between, before they arrived at the venue.

The team at Easy Roads

Fast forward to today and he is trying to do the same for a much larger set of people. With his army of travel junkies, he has built a platform to make roadtrips more fun. It hasn’t been long since Easy Roads was officially launched and yet, it has been quick to grab the attention of its target audience.

For the right user, it helps overcome multiple barriers. Being built around road travellers, Easy Roads helps travellers discover places to explore along the route. For any route you choose, you will be able to know how good or bad the road is, what are the times to avoid, what are the local conditions like and these little things make a world of difference while on the road. The trips featured on the app can be tweaked to one’s taste and also include approximate travel costs, food and stay recommendations and direct booking options.

Easy Roads is also working with Maharashtra Tourism Board to help the tourism ecosystem in the region. Almost all the state tourism boards are trying to promote the less known destinations they have to offer. While using social channels allows them educate a large set of audience, a platform like Easy Roads has the potential to actually drive people, who have the intent and medium to travel, to these destinations. With associations like these, Easy Roads will be able to offer better value to its users while the tourism boards will be able to add a new channel to attract travellers to these destinations and thus support local communities and businesses who can benefit from the increased tourist inflow.

The Easy Roads team has been hard at work and has constantly been adding new features to the app. Currently the regions are limited but they are constantly adding new geographies with original content from a road traveller’s perspective. In a bid to be the only resource you will need for roadtrips, they have added an array of services. You can choose to get your car checked before a trip, call for support in event of breakdown, rent a car if you are in a new city and even hire a driver if you want to relax in the passenger seat sometime.

Apart from adding new geographies, Easy Roads is also in the process of forging partnerships with some major events, a recent one being India Bike Week, India’s largest motorcycle festival that sees people riding to Goa from all parts of the country. They have also partnered with Nariyal Paani, a popular music festival scheduled for later this month. With these associations, they are looking to start engaging the attendees and enabling them to multiply the fun of journey even before they have reached the venue.

Easy Roads is accessible through its Android app which you can download here. Recently they also announced a new mobile website that replicates the app experience. You can find it at www.easyroads.in.

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