Travel Portal Musafir.com To Invest Rs 120 Crore In India By 2018

UAE based online travel company Musafir.com is planning to invest Rs 120 crore over the next four years in India as it looks to expand it's presence in the country. Musafir.com was launched in India in October last year. By 2018, the company aspires to be among the top five online travel agencies in India

"We plan to invest Rs 120 crore for expanding our presence in India by 2018. The investments will be mainly for marketing campaigns and enhancement of product," Musafir.com Co-Founder and Managing Director Sachin Gadoya told PTI.

The online travel firm also plans to increase its offices in India. It currently has a office in Mumbai. "We will be opening more offices in India. Our second office will be opened at Gurgaon by March 31, 2015. The other offices will come up in Ahmedabad, Bengaluru and Pune," Gadoya added.

Right now the company has around 120 people in Mumbai and will be adding to the employees strength.

Apart from strengthening presence in India, the company is looking at Nepal and Sri Lanka. Musafir.Com currently provides access to flights for 3,000 destinations on over 270 airlines besides helping access to 75,000 hotel properties.

Notably, Sachin Tendulkar is also a minority stakeholder in Musafir.com India business. Musafir.com was founded by Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdullah Al Thani, Sachin Gadoya and Albert Dias in August 2007 and was inaugurated by Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohammed Al Thani on April 23, 2009 and launched in India in 23 October 2013.

Delhi Startup Strollup Wants to Plan Your Intra-City Hangouts

"A plan is only as good as those who see it through." Well, there are bunch of people who see it through more often and are way better than most of us. And, isn't that just cool? Strollup.in goes out of their way and make sure you end up making your outing a special one.

Founded in 2014 and based out of Delhi, Strollup works on planning your intra city hangouts. Currently in beta launch phase and testing with 50 users, they would soon launch. Users can get access on request by posting on their FB page https://www.facebook.com/StrollUp

Co-founded by Abhishek (IIT-D graduate), Ankur and Sahil (Ex-amazon employees), Siddharth and Prerna (DTU graduates); the idea to go ahead with Strollup struck them when Ankur was busy planning his friend’s birthday party and was not able to come up with a cool place to hangout which would satisfy everyone’s needs. Ankur recollects “We saw that most people go to the same old places, but they want to find new experiences around them. They don’t want to take the pain to search for places and try to fit the pieces together."



On asking how they are different from other companies in the market, Abhishek says "day to day outing and multiple user interest is where all our thought process is pooled. There are a lot of companies in the market that are planning your multi-day trips covering multiple cities. But there are not many that suggest memorable experiences in the city live you live in. Frequency of intra-city hangouts is far more than trips and still there experience gets unnoticed. We enhance this experience of picnics, birthdays, anniversaries or anything related to your regular hangouts".

Strollup is a self-funded organisation and is not partnering with anyone as of now. Looking to have active users in 10 cities by the end of 2015, they also have 5 interns working on the project.

"Group Planning is the common motto we are working on. Moreover, every company provides trips and hangouts based on single person’s needs. What they don't consider are the people one would be going with. So whenever you make a plan, there would be someone who won’t like it. As they say, it’s hard to please everyone. We want to provide a platform which gives personalized view of a group rather than an individual. StrollUp would be like your personal plan buddy, who knows all your different groups and, plans suitable experiences that would satisfy every member of the group" says Abhishek, who also tells about the extensive algorithm that is being used at their organisation "we plan the hangout with 6 different types of activities: Eat/Drink, Dessert, Play, Visit, Movie, Malls/Market. If we have at least 1000 places in each category in a city, the total plans would be in the order of 10^9. Then we take all user group preferences such as cost, distance, time and filter the plans and then run our rule engine that removes the absurd plans and comes up with 1000 plans. We rate all the remaining plans on various criteria (travel details, distance b/w places, user reviews) and show you the top 15 plans".

Coming up with something new within the company is also a glimpse on how fresh they are, as all the co-founders decided to be a manager of one of the other co-founder, hence all the management issues can now be solved at an equal level. Definitely a message to be learned for the upcoming start-ups. Also, they have made sure that if any of the members leave, the work shouldn't be hampered and everyone should be replaceable (though for the good times to come, we hope that never happens!).

With so much happening in this fast paced world, Ankur says, "they always want to launch their product tomorrow and are working hard to do it ASAP." With an assurance of giving their customers a time to remember provided they want to experience it leisurely with their loved ones, we would like to wish them all the luck they need to get to the top notch of the market.

Book hassle free and budget friendly accommodations with WelcomeRentals

WelcomeRentals is an online accommodation portal which provides an alternative accommodation to middle class traveler from costly and crowded hotels, where they can feel at home. Started by Sharik Usmani, Ankit Malhotra and Neil Kumar in 2013, the portal provides short and long term accommodation. "At WelcomeRentals the hosts make money, travelers save money and both share their culture. This is what gives immense pleasure", says Sharik.

"We started because out research found out India does not have unique inventories online", says Neil. "There is huge competition in this market for sure, but we are doing it differently with our unique inventory which are not online anywhere else but with us, this is our USP and also our world class customer support team makes us different than others, we provide customer support for both, Host and Travelers on emails and phone calls", added Ankit. A detailed description of the listings, easy to manage platform and unlimited photographs for free makes it different than other.

They plan to launch our mobile apps for owners' admin account, where the users can change their complete listing, edit or delete, upgrade or renew subscriptions. With new modules in process of being added to their existing portal, they plan to attract a lot more users and increase their base. "A cloud based technology platform will make the process faster for the users. We are also introducing Facebook App and programs for corporates", says Sharik. "We have partnered with some travel agents and corporate houses so far and many more partners are in pipeline", added Ankit.

Their current team is based out of Delhi and comprises of 25 experienced sales people, listing experts, SEO experts, PPC experts, Finance expert and technical experts. ‘In the coming two years we have a plan to double our employee count to provide better product and services to our users and see our channel being used by thousands of domestic and international travelers, corporate houses and travel agents to book hassle free budget friendly accommodations online’, says Neil.

When asked for a message for future Entrepreneurs, Sharik said "First of all, have faith in your idea, see what market needs. Make your product user friendly and a perfect market fit." Neil added "Also an entrepreneur needs to be multi tasking to handle the business."

Noida based Startup Routofy Lets you plan your trips in just one-click

Routofy is a travel-planning engine, helping you decide the best travel option available for your next trip in just one click. Ronak, Akash and Abhishek came up with the idea of Routofy in their hostel room in IIT Delhi. "It all started when I got this opportunity to spend a whole semester in France under IIT Delhi semester exchange programme. During this time, my top priority was to travel across Europe. I ended up travelling to almost 12 countries. I realized that so much needs to be done to just figure out a suitable travel option to a destination, given the mind-boggling number of options available with constantly changing prices & availability and complicated schedules.", says Ronak.

How we generally plan our trip after deciding on the destination?

1. Open multiple tabs to check for cost and availability of flights/trains/buses


2. Check for alternative options incase direct was not available


3. Optimize the choices on price, duration, comfort

"When I came back to India, I realized that the it’s even more complex here given the connectivity and availability issues.", said Ronak.



Routofy assures us that we don’t need to spend a whole day doing this. "Our in-house algorithm, a multi-modal route planner, first finds each and every possible path (both direct and indirect) via different cities across all modes. Then all these paths are being filtered by according to various constraints and heuristics to give only realistic paths. This was about the technology working at the core to get the most relevant results.", they say. With Routofy, you can seamlessly search and compare the time, duration and price of various transport options - ranging from trains and flights to buses, and travelling with your own car or taking a cab.

We found the way Routofy showed its results very interesting and different. They have a unique way of rating called WOW ratings. "A lot of times, people don’t want the cheapest option or the fastest option (that may be too expensive), they want something in the middle, basically that gives them the best value for money, which we call the WOW factor, that takes into account various factors like price, duration, comfort, number of stops for a particular itinerary.", they explained.

[caption id="attachment_92905" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Founders of Routofy - Ronak, Akash & Abhishek (in random order)[/caption]

All the options, which are by default sorted on WOW ratings, are displayed on an easy to read and intuitive timeline so that you quickly gain an overview of your available travel options. Every travel option is represented by a box. The start position of the box gives the departure time and the length, their duration. This way you can easily compare all possible connections at a glance, comfortably customize search results to match your preferences and find the best connections.

Based out of Tlabs FilmCity, Noida they have very recently taken out a pre-launch version with almost all flights trains and buses running in India. They are in the process of integrating cabs hence making it a complete solution. Their main focus will be on the product and increasing our coverage in the near future. The ease by which you get the most suitable result will surely increase their users.

"Find the best option to travel in just one click- that's how we say it and that too options or ways you've never thought of before, with exact schedules and latest prices on that day. Our results page gives you at one place all your options with every information you need before deciding your travel option to a destination, be it a metro city or a small hill station.", they added.

As a message for entrepreneurs, they quoted "The fool didn’t know it was impossible and went ahead and did it." Don't just give up there would be a lot of unanswered questions in the beginning but with time you will be able to tackle them.

Tripigator.com, first travel planning engine launched in partnership with Incredible India of Ministry of Tourism

Revolutionizing the travel and technology space, Tripigator.com, first and only instant, travel planning engine, was launched today in Delhi in partnership with Incredible India of Ministry of Tourism. Tripigator.com instantly generates personalized travel itineraries on fewer inputs and significantly reduces users’ effort by replacing ten tabs with one tab.

The website has been chosen as the official travel planner by the Ministry of Tourism and will also be available on Incredible India website.

Tripigator.com is not an online travel agent or a tour operator, but a first-of-its-kind personalized travel planning service. The website was unveiled by Mr. Parvez Dewan, Secretary Ministry of Tourism, Govt. of India and its three founders - Mukul Garg, Piyush Grover, and Karteek Narumanchi all graduates from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT).

Tripigator, a product from WorthYourHolidays, has developed Intuitive Planning Engine, which is a heuristic based decision making technology, considering more than 30 critical factors to design a personalized holiday itinerary with real time prices at a click.

Tripigator will help both domestic and international travellers in planning their trips seamlessly by asking basic inputs such as timeline, budget, areas of interest (adventure, romantic, nature etc.) and destinations of choice. The technology creates a range of travel itineraries in no time and ranks them as per users experience.

Founded by IIT Kharagpur Alumni, WorthYourHolidays was selected in the Top 50 Global Young Innovators, at the Moscow Open innovation Program.

Some of the USPs Tripigator has got in comparison to other travel planning engines are:

• Open just 1 tab instead of the usual 10. A faster and easier way to plan Indian travel itinerary
• Considers more than 30 parameters for designing a personalized holiday plan
• Realistic plans with live prices of flight, train, hotel, cab and bus
• Seamless user experience and visually appealing user interface

Comparison of Tripigator.co with other websites of its kind

Tripigator offers a seamless user experience and visually appealing user interface, which complements the core technology. Tripigator aggregates the information from all over the web to create structured travel data and applies decision science and remarkable technology to create personalized holiday itineraries with live prices.

It not only creates personalized itineraries but also helps users to share it with their travel companions, enabling them to collaborate on their travel plan.

How Tripigator.com works

During the launch, Mr. Parvez Dewan, Secretary Ministry of Tourism, Govt. of India said, "We are happy to partner with Worth Your Holidays and compliment the young team on introducing this innovative technology Tripigator. With the introduction of this technology travelling to and within India will become easier to plan. We hope that the process will be more enjoyable for all tourists, from within the country and internationally.

Mukul Garg, co-founder of Tripigator said - "A traveller spends approximately 20 days and visits 22 websites for planning the holiday and more than 70% are troubled in the process. With Tripigator, the whole process is done in a few seconds. We foresee potential in the way Internet, will power the entire travel decision-making funnel in the coming years to offer improved travel experiences."

Musafir.com a Travel Portal with Sachin Tendulkar as stakeholder launches in India

Today, a new travel portal Musafir.com launched in India with Sachin Tendulkar as a minority stakeholder in it as well as brand ambassador of portal. Musafir.com is UAE-based travel portal and Sachin hold 7.5% stake in it. The master blaster Sachin Tendulkar launched the portal in a press conference in Mumbai with turban on his head and even named his this turban face character as - 'Shekhu Shekhawat'.

"Musafir.com has been the most different from all the ads i have done till date" said Sachin Tendulkar at launch.

Musafir.com is the UAE's first premium-experience travel website now ready to launch operations in India. Currently it offer flights to over 3,000 destinations and stays in over 46,000 properties around the world.The company is now venturing in the exciting Indian travel market with the promise to establish the same company ethos which made musafir a success in the UAE.

Musafir.com was founded by Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdullah Al Thani, Sachin Gadoya and Albert Dias in August 2007 and was inaugurated by Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohammed Al Thani on April 23, 2009.

With Sachin on board of Musafir.com's promotion the travel portal might give stiff competetion to leading online travel agencies (OTAs) such as MakeMyTrip, Yatra.com or ClearTrip. Although these OTAs, sell only about 15% of international tickets sold daily and rest 85% are sold by mostly brick-and-mortar travel agents.

Sachin Tendulkar is the second celebrity in the last two years roped in by travel companies as a stakeholder. Last year, actor Salman Khan bought a minority stake in Yatra.com.

TripTern Automate Your Holiday Trip Planning

New Delhi based startup TripTern is an intelligent & automatic trip planner that ease you planning of your holiday, vacation or business trips with its engaging social travel website, it automatically prepares your itinerary/guidebook of activities for the traveler’s destination.

Users just have to select city from 32 cities to choose from, choose hotel, number of days of stay, interests and budget and it automatically prepares the most optimal & complete trip guidebook for you. It considers transit time, opening and closing hours of places while preparing itinerary. As of now it provides a list of hotels to choose from that is, you can't choose you own hotel.



The user enters a destination city and TripTern prepares a personalised travel itinerary for that destination while taking into account their trip dates, budget, optimal route information, time constraints, and method of transportation. The user is then able to add or remove activities by simply clicking on the ‘remove/add icon’. With each user choice, TripTern learns the user travel preferences and proceeds to provide relevant activities that are more likely to be of interest.

It also allows travelers to archive their most valuable memories and share it with their family and friends. One can also browse their friend's trips as well as it also allow to login via your facebook account.



The website does not book tickets or do hotel reservation but its planning do the same in future sometime soon and also on verge of developing a mobile app as well, create a local language glossary and add details about local weather and transportation to enhance personalised trip itineraries.

As of now the website has very limited number of cities/countries to choose from however the website is planing to increase the same gradually, if you are planning for trip in India it has Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai & Kolkata to choose from. TripTern launched publicly in march this year and recently got undisclosed funding from SeedStartup UAE. The company is also planning to launch mobile app.

IRCTC & MakeMyTrip are among India's Most Visited Travel Sites

No matter how buggy and balmy is Indian railways' portal IRCTC was in past year and 'best viewed in Internet Explorer 6' it still top the list of most visited portal in India in Travel category, people use to visit this official portal of Indian railways more often than any other travel portal in India.

Followed by IRCTC portal, MakeMyTrip is the second most visited travel site in India in terms of unique visitors and showed 39% growth in its unique visitors traffic from home/ office locations followed by Yatra.com as 3rd on the list as per Comscore media metrix report. The report clearly states the consumer behavior and market condition of Travel related portals and offering in India that seems to be flourishing but with due trust within consumers. Below are some interesting findings for online travel niche;

1. Traffic to the Travel category sites/portal grew to 14 million+ visitors in April, i.e. 50% growth from the previous year


2. Travel sites now attract more than one-third (37%) of India’s total Internet population


3. Indians are more cost-conscious consumer in the world and do deliberate decisions when it comes to spending online over travel sites. (as per average time spent on travel site per visit)


4. India ranked second among all countries, behind only the United Kingdom, in terms of the average time spent per visitor in the category.