Building a successful business isn’t easy. The road from having the idea to actually taking the plunge is tough and the journey beyond that is even tougher. Despite that, we learn about a large number of startups everyday, especially in the fast growing travel space. There are many entrepreneurs who choose to address the pain point of masses. While there are many unsuccessful entrepreneurs, there are some who set examples for others. They make mistakes, they learn from them, they improvise and they keep going.

We reached out to some of the travel industry entrepreneurs, who made news this year, to share the lessons from their journey so far. Here are some of them:

Ritesh Agarwal, Founder & CEO, OYO Rooms

If there is one startup that stirred up the travel industry ecosystem this year, it has to be OYO Rooms. Ritesh Agarwal started his entrepreneurial journey at a very young age and went on to become the first Indian to win Thiel Fellowship. He started OYO Rooms to address the lack of quality hotel accommodation in India by offering predictable and affordable options. They have a network of hotels across 160 cities in India where they are offering great value to the travellers and the tourism ecosystem. This year, the budget hotel aggregator raised over USD 125 million funding and expanded fast enough to threaten some of the biggest names in the industry.

He shared, “In 2015, we learnt from experience that if you can showcase demonstrable benefits to business-owners, and utilize technology to manage everyday business problems, even a legacy industry such as Hotels can be modernized. In over 4000 hotels across India, hotel-owners use our business apps to manage inventory, revenue and CRM.

Lastly, it is critical to build a great team and stay agile. Our hyper-growth coupled with strong unit-economics would not have been possible were it not for diligent operations focus executed by high-quality talent.”

Yogendra Vauspal, Founder, Stayzilla

Yogendra is another entrepreneur who started his journey at a very young age. He started with various web and e-commerce projects after dropping out of engineering at the age of 19. As he went deeper into this space, he went on to launch an e-commerce portal of his own. Eventually he launched the accommodation portal Stayzilla. With the message ‘Make room for something new’, this year Stayzilla shifted focus to homestays and other form of alternative stays.

Talking about his learning from the same, Yogendra said, “Indians are not really closed minded or fragmented by various lines of preference as we like to believe. We are witnessing a beautiful expression of opening up homes or extra rooms for a variety of demographics and an ease with which homeowners have adopted the concept. Although they can select at deeper levels on basis language and food habits, we are seeing the selections happening at a very broad level of traveller type and there is a larger openness in the people than we actually believe exists. Indian homeowners are much more open when it comes to hosting guests and I believe this was the biggest learning of 2015 for us at Stayzilla.”

Sankalp Agarwal, Co-founder and CEO, TravelTriangle

With entrepreneurship in his blood, Sankalp Agarwal is the co-founder of TravelTriangle, India’s first full-stack holiday marketplace. At TravelTriangle, he leads the company vision and is intrinsically involved in fundraising, business growth & creating a world class team. He held a lucrative post at Adobe before his own entrepreneurial venture. His innovative nature led him to tackle various technological gaps in day to day life during his college days and he is trying to do something similar for travellers with TravelTriangle.

Emphasising the right growth strategy for a startup, he said, “For a business the first and foremost thing is to chase 100 fans. In the category having 100 fans who will talk about you is way better than having 1 million people liking you. As for a startup- look at the growth in this way. One starts from the garage moves on to a small office which leads to a tribe of followers converting into a village and eventually a nation. When you are in garage phase you have to invest in the product, relentlessly pursue the product till there is traction and as you move into a small office get the generalist and right product market fit people. Once you move to a tribe format you will need specialist like Marketing- HR function to take care of your business. It’s a constant process of evolution which comes through growing with right intent.”

Gautam Shewakramani, Founder & CEO, AudioCompass

Born and brought up in Mumbai, Gautam did his undergrad in Computer Science and Film and then went on to business school at MIT Sloan in Boston. After moving back to his home, he spent some time actively working with and seed investing in startups and that is when he got inspired to start AudioCompass. AudioCompass offers audio guidebooks for a large number of tourist attractions through a very simple mobile app. This year AudioCompass expanded to Oman and also won the Start Tel Aviv award.

Highlighting the importance of business associations, Gautam said, “One of the biggest challenges for us in building AudioCompass has been convincing some of the legacy travel industry players that customers are ready for change. In travel, change has been demand driven, i.e. consumers are demanding change before suppliers are offering it. AudioCompass’ early success and validation has come from the fact that we saw a gap and anticipated the consumer need of wanting to be empowered while traveling.”

Abdul Hadi Shaikh, CEO, Fxkart.com

Exchanging money is a hassle in India and there is a lack of information about the processes and formalities. Dr. Mushtaq Shah, who was head of research for Equinox Capital Management, founded Fxkart after facing the problem dealing with individual Forex dealers during his frequent international trips. After founding Fxkart, he got Abdul Hadi Shaikh on-board as CEO. Abdul was the head of research at Ratings Intelligence, an ethical investment advisory firm in London before joining Fxkart. After the launch this year, Fxkart was quick to introduce a mobile app and partner with AirAsia.

Speaking from his experience of building a marketplace business, Abdul Hadi Shaikh said, “As an aggregator our biggest challenge was to work on both sides of the business. We thought that enabling tech for the dealers would be the easier part but we really had to swim against the tide to get 650+ dealer locations while the customers adopted quickly. That was something we didn’t expect but that was ground reality. Learning – Assumptions are good but they are not necessarily the right way”

Sidharth Gupta, Co-Founder, Treebo Hotels

The budget hotel industry has seen lot of activity this year and another startup that stood out in this space is Treebo Hotels. Treebo Hotels officially started in June and raised series A funds from Matrix and SAIF Partners in June itself, making it one of the fastest series A fund raised by a tech startup since inception. The co-founder Sidharth comes with a very strong educational background and has worked with McKinsey and Company for years before joining hands with Rahul Chaudhary and Kadam Jeet Jain to start Treebo Hotels.

Focusing on the value offered by a startup, Sidharth said, “In the current heady environment it’s easy for new entrepreneurs to be misled into doing a lot of jazzy things, quickly. It’s also easy for them to believe that funding and PR are their given rights! But I think founders need to first ask themselves the question – ‘What is our single biggest value addition to the customer’s life?’ ‘What is our reason for existence?’ ‘What is our core?’. They must develop clarity on this, and then relentlessly work on offering this value to the customer over and over again. Once you get this right everything else – growth, funding, revenue, PR, etc. – will follow”

Benny Kao, Co-Founder, TripVerse

Benny has always been fascinated with technology and how it changes the world. He holds experience of working with some big names in the industry. Being an avid traveller, he often faced problem managing his trips with the existing tools which inspired him to start TripVerse. TripVerse allows travellers to discover authentic user generated trip ideas and create their own itineraries to keep them informed even offline. Recently the startup was selected to be a part of Amadeus’ travel startup initiative Amadeus Next.

Emphasising the importance of simplifying user experience, Benny said, “With so much information available on the internet, travel planning isn’t really easier and simpler than before. The information overload we have today might have made travel planning a more lengthy process. I believe true value lies in presenting travellers information that is relevant and actionable”

Kunal Jain, Co-Founder, Your Local Cousin

It isn’t easy to plan activities for your trip when you are travelling there for the first time. The problem takes another scale, especially when you are travelling to an international destination. This inspired Kunal to start Your Local Cousin. It is a peer to peer service which connects travellers to a local expert and as travellers look for the human connect in travel, such services are picking up fast. This allows them to explore like a local and not like a tourist.

Kunal emphasised on the importance of networking and said, “Sitting behind your laptop and plugging away all day is not a healthy way to build a startup / business. You should get out, meet people and have a social life and the sooner you figure this out the better you’ll think and perform mentally”

You can also download our list of travel industry predictions by industry experts for the year 2016 here.

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Planning a trip isn’t an easy job. While it starts with just the idea of a destination to explore, getting all the details right takes a lot more effort. Managing all the bookings from flights to hotels and everything in between is even tougher. Trip Planning apps enter the scene here. These apps try to simplify the job for you by working like your personal digital assistant. They suggest plans and organise your itinerary. Some of them offer additional features that will not only allow you to plan and save an itinerary but also help you to discover and book activities at your destination. Here are five trip planning apps that you should check out.

TripHobo

TripHobo, which started off as JoGuru in 2013, is a service that helps travellers plan their trips and prepare personalised itineraries. To create your own itinerary, all you have to do is choose your destination, select the attractions and TripHobo will arrange them for you. You can share it with others and it will be added to TripHobo’s large database of user generated trip itineraries. It also allows you to pick someone else’s trip plan and customise it to your liking. This works very well when you don’t know much about your destination.

It allows you to include multiple cities in your plan along with the activities and attractions there. TripHobo tries to minimise the travel time between attractions by taking into account the opening and closing time of various attractions. They work with various major partners like Zomato to offer information about restaurants and Booking.com to help with hotel bookings to make the experience seamless. The Android and iOS apps have been recently introduced to allow access on the go.

Team Location: India

Covered Geography: Worldwide

Launched in: 2013

Platform: Web, Android (Free). iOS (Free)

Downloads: 100-500 on Android

TripIt

TripIt is one of the most hassle free trip planning apps and probably the oldest on this list. It doesn’t give you suggestions for places to visit or touristy destinations to include in your itinerary. Instead it organises all your bookings in one place. So you have your flights bookings, train tickets, car rentals, hotel bookings and everything else neatly organised in the app. During your travel, you won’t have to scroll through your emails to find the booking IDs as you have all the booking details you need at one place.

You don’t have to manually enter all the details in TripIt. Once you have registered, you can simply forward all the booking emails to an email ID and you will have everything in the app. You can also choose to share the trip plans with your friends if you want to keep them posted about your plan. If you like to organise your meetings and plans using Google Calendar, TripIt can sync with it as well so that you can view it across multiple platforms.

Team Location: United States

Covered Geography: Worldwide

Launched in: 2006

Platform: Android (Free, in app purchase for Pro acocunt). iOS (Free, in app purchase for Pro acocunt)

Downloads: 1M-5M on Android

Trip38

Trip38 recently came into existence and their team has done a pretty good job of making a trip planning app. Similar to TripIt, Trip38 users can forward the booking confirmation emails to them to find them neatly organised in the app. Unlike TripIt which comes with both free and paid account options, Trip38 is free for the users. While the basic functionality of managing trip plans is similar to TripIt, it comes with many differentiating features.

Beyond itinerary management, it offers location sensitive content like tourist attractions, restaurants, support information and events with the option to book through the app. If you choose to book, you are directed to the respective provider. The app also offers information about embassies and consulates for all countries across the world to help travellers. (Read: Trip38 plans to take away your tickets)

Team Location: India

Covered Geography: Worldwide

Launched in: 2013

Platform: Android (Free). iOS (Free)

Downloads: 10K-50K on Android

Tripigator

With the motto of ‘Be a traveller, not a tourist’, Tripigator is the official travel planning partner of Indian Tourism Ministry. Tripigator asks for basic inputs about the trip like budget, interests and timeline and destination to cook up personalised trip plans for the users. It is available via website as well as mobile app. Along with the trip plan, it offers real time prices to give an approximate cost of travel. You can collaborate with your companions by inviting them to edit the same plan together.

Tripigator uses big data technology to filter through large number of web pages and reviews to offer the best itinerary. The destinations are rated based on different categories like adventure and culture with other details like weather forecast and best time to visit. They will soon add the option of accessing the plans and destination guides offline so that users can view their itineraries anywhere having to worry about connectivity.

Team Location: India

Covered Geography: India

Launched in: 2014

Platform: Web, Android (Free)

Downloads: 50K-100K on Android

TripVerse

TripVerse combines the best of trip planning, itinerary management and local discovery, all in a single app. You can not only plan and save your own trip with TripVerse but also browse through the itineraries created by other users for some inspiration similar to TripHobo. The service is available via mobile app or desktop website giving users the freedom to use the platform of their choice. It is easy to create detailed plans on the desktop website and add activities. It will suggest related activities at the destination if you are short of ideas.

The trip can then be downloaded on your phone and saved offline on the app. They are relatively new in the space so at this point there aren’t many itineraries to browse but this will change as more users get on the platform. Another interesting feature that TripVerse offers is Trip Collaboration which allows multiple users to add activities in a shared trip. (Read: TripVerse handles lot more than just your itineraries)

Team Location: United States

Covered Geography: Worldwide

Launched in: 2014

Platform: Web, Android (Free). iOS (Free)

Downloads: 100-500 on Android

There are many other trip planning apps available for different kind of travellers. Which one is your favourite?

The post Five best trip planning apps appeared first on TravHQ.

During our recent visit to the RISE conference, we came across some really innovative startups that are determined to things around in the travel industry using technology. TripVerse was one startup that caught our attention despite dealing in a crowded travel planning space. This is because they have nicely knit together trip planning, itinerary management and local discovery into one product. You can discover itineraries of other people, create your own and discover new places to visit as you create your itinerary.

Benny Kao, Founder of TripVerse

We got a chance to chat with Benny Kao, the founder of TripVerse. During our chat, we talked about the product, the brand and the team among other things. Here is an excerpt from the conversation:

TravHQ- So what is TripVerse?

Benny- It’s a travel itinerary creator that allows people to discover authentic, user-generated trip ideas and then view them offline.

TravHQ- How can it help a traveller?

Benny- We help travellers to take their travel plans on the road and view it offline with maps and everything on-the-go

TravHQ- So what should a traveller prefer – The website or the app?

Benny- Website is a more powerful tool for creating a travel plan from scratch. The app with its offline viewing ability is great for viewing travel plans on the road. User still have the ability to add trips and activities on the mobile app, but some features on website aren’t available on the mobile app yet.

TravHQ- Between ‘Discover Trips’ & ‘Create Trips’ option on your website, what is being preferred by the users?

Benny- Travel enthusiast who has done research for travel love the offline readability we offer. People love the idea behind ‘Discover Trips’ but some prefer to create trips from scratch. We are working hard to improve the user-experience based on feedback from our users.

TravHQ- Aren’t there too many players already in the industry doing what you intend to do (i.e. Itinerary planning)? We can download a travel guide, there are e-guides, trip planning services etc. What sort of competition you have?

Benny- The existing players are:

1- Travel guide (TripAdvisor, Tripomatic): The lack of social element means the attractions they show can be generic and therefore irrelevant to most travellers. In case of TripAdvisor, their reviews are especially prone to manipulation as have been reported many a times.

2- Itinerary viewer (TripIt, TripCase): It’s a pain to add activities other than flights & hotels. They also lack travel planning features to share and discover user-generated trips.

Our approach to travel is to create easily-accessible travel plans by leveraging the network. We believe, similar to LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman’s prediction, formation of networks will be (if not already is) a major technological force.

TravHQ- Tell us something about your background and what inspired you to start TripVerse?

Benny- I used to work at ASUS as their Country Product Manage for Czech and Slovakia. While I was living in Europe, I searched hard for an offline-readable itinerary viewer to track accounts I was to visit or attractions I wanted to see. I was displeased with the effort needed to create my list on TripIt so I ended up using Evernote for most of my travel plans.

When I was living in Prague, I tried the top-10 restaurants on TripAdvisor and realized all the customers there are travellers like myself. My Czech co-workers have also never heard of the places recommended on TripAdvisor.

TravHQ- How do you guys intend to monetize this concept?

Benny- From our users’ feedback, we confirm being able to book accommodations, transportation, tours, and attraction tickets is a natural part of planning a trip. So we’d like to add that in future.

TravHQ- So how big is the team and what are your future plans? Is funding on cards?

Benny- We have 4 cofounders working on the project. Most of TripVerse’s founding members have been avid travellers and are deeply involved in technology. I have lived in US, Taiwan, Japan, and Czech Republic, Louise has lived in the UK, US, Germany, Spain and Germany and has been planning her family’s travel since she was a teenager, and another cofounder based in California has backpacked to sixty countries over two years. This unique background allows us to understand the needs of travellers and design meaningful and elegant solutions.

TravHQ- Any message that you would like to share with the TravHQ community?

Benny- We’d love for your community to try TripVerse of course. Shoot me a message if there any thoughts, complaints, and suggestions.

TripVerse is a nice product if you are looking for trip planning app. Apart from the additional features it offers over the competition, we really like the fact that they have a desktop website which you can use to create a detailed itinerary. It is surely worth a try. You can find them here Website | Android app | iOS app

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Welcome to Hong Kong where we are reporting live to you from the RISE Summit, which is currently being organized in the picturesque venue of Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre. While we were a little late to join the party on Day 1 and actually made it to the summit not before lunch, once we did step in, it was all crazy indeed.

For those of you who don’t know, RISE Summit is brought to you by the awesome bunch of people who organise the “Web Summit”. In its inaugural edition, we have a completely sell-out crowd with over 5000 people attending it from 70+ countries. There is so much happening at the summit, that 2 days do not seem to be sufficient

Here are some really interesting Travel startups that exhibited on the first day. As you would expect from the travel industry, we had exhibitors from Japan, US, Australia and many other countries at the summit.

From an app that allows you to chat with fellow flyers even when your phone is on airplane mode to an app that uses beacons to enhance your on-road travel experience, we had them all!

Here is a short photologue of some of them, more updates & reviews to follow.

Guillaume Panot, CEO of FlightChat app that allows flyers to chat with each other without the need of a bluetooth connection

Malaysian startup Seeties, helps you to explore Asian cities like a local

TripVerse from United States, aims to be the one-stop trip planning app for your next vacations

Singapore based Triplynr helps you to plan that perfect trip by making it easy to search best itineraries

Representing the home country Hong Kong, Sam the Local is an online market place that connects explorers to locals who take them on the best experiences

Odigo is the trip creating and sharing platform to help you plan your visit to Japan

Representing Western Australia, down-under JamJar helps you to explore bars, beans, art, music & food in Western Australia

You can find more updates from RISE here.

The post In Focus: Travel Startups on Day 1 at RISE Conference appeared first on TravHQ.

The much awaited 2 day Rise Conference kicks-off in Hong Kong next week on July 31 – August 1 2015 at the HKCC (Hong Kong Convention Centre). For those of you are not aware, RISE is the first ever tech-summit in Asia brought to you by the same team that organizes Web Summit, held annually in Dublin every November. The event gives a fantastic opportunity to hear and meet exciting startups from across the globe that are solving business & consumer problems.

The inaugural edition of RISE conference also has a line-up of Travel startups from countries such as Singapore, Hong Kong, USA and Australia. Here is our ultimate list of 7 startups exhibiting their travel prowess at RISE.

Image Credits: Rise Conference Facebook Page

Travelog.me, Singapore

Singapore based Travelog is an iPhone only mobile travel guide helping you to plan your next trip in an easy way. By downloading the app, you can join a community of like-minded travellers, bloggers, local experts and receive tailored recommendations on top things to do.

We will be keen to understand how are they are different from similar services and where exactly do they fit in the traveller’s cycle?

Wanderlust, Australia

Australian startup, Wanderlust claims to build a travel tribe consisting of strangers from different countries enabling travellers to take help when in need. Can they change they way we travel? We’ll find out at RISE

Jamjar, Australia

Another startup from Australia, Jamjar is a travel discovery app for the explorers who are on a constant quest to find out the most happening places. They seem to be focussed on the Australian region for now but we will be keen to chat-up with the Jamjar team for more info.

Klook, Hong Kong

Representing host country Hong Kong, Klook caught our attention from the list. They are providing unique travel experiences across entire APAC at discounted rates. For instance, Bicycling experience at Kyoto or exploring Bangkok on a Scooter.

However, the competition seems to be very high for services providing offbeat and custom travel experiences. We will know Klook’s future roadmap soon.

Weestay, Hong Kong

Weestay is also from Hong Kong and their single line pitch is that they combine CouchSurfing & Airbnb removing the element of cost from between. Simply speaking, you can find free accommodation via network of your friends using Weestay.

Their focus seems to be backpackers who are on a shoe-string budget. Who else are they targeting? We’ll learn more at RISE.

HotelQuickly, Hong Kong

HotelQuickly is the Uber for hotels in APAC providing last minute dynamic deals on your bookings. We had recently reviewed an Indian startup RoomsTonite that seems to be pretty similar in-terms of overall offering. More on HotelQuickly coming your way pretty soon!

Tripverse, USA

Completing the list is Tripverse, a travel startup coming all the way from United States. Tripverse is an offline readable itinerary viewer that makes creating, viewing, and sharing travel plans simple and easy. There is no dearth of itinerary planning apps but we are optimistic that Tripverse has a unique positioning and target market. We’ll discover more of that, when we catch-up.

So if you are a travel startup coming to RISE, we will be keen to meet you in person, hear your stories and understand how you are making tripping experience better  If we have missed you out from the above list, please drop us a note at editor@travhq.com.

You can find more updates from RISE here.

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