Wish you all a happy, prosperous, healthy, and safe 2021
looking back
The year 2020 started with the hope of moving a section of our efforts from B2C to B2B trip planning services and SaaS products. Even though we had a technological stack in place, we were lagging in industry connections. In the first quarter, our focus was to connect with content providers and aggregators and we are glad that all the big firms with whom we got in touch listened and believed in our vision. Even though we were in the very initial stage of user acquisition ( just a few hundred users), they gave us an opportunity to utilize their inventory. Major achievements were travel payouts, booking.com, agoda.com, viator.com
Then, Corona Happened!
Chinese calenders says 2020, a year of the rat. With time, it actually became ‘a year of the bat’
The effect of Carona was devastating as the primarily affected industry segment due to lockdown was tourism and hospitality, resulting in huge job loss in this industry segment. As it was hard on the bigger firms, it was little light on the lean setups, like ours, which were able to sail through this with lower burn rate and were able to concentrate on technological improvements and connections.
We improved the MapMyTrip feature with more privacy options to help end travellers safely share the trip progresses.
We reached out to authorities to make ” local the focal ” the slogan of these tough times. In our talks and discussions, we encouraged people to explore local places of interest virtually rather than getting discouraged due to lockdowns.
GreenTheRed contest feature helped virtual travellers explore their neighbourhood while being in the safety of their homes.
‘Your Travel stories’ captures your travel inspirations, plans, trips, and research in one commonplace.
Improving our interface to provide planning and estimation right on a dynamic map enabled us to get more user engagement.
Introducing new SaaS features enabled us to reach out to B2B planning agencies, DMO, and DMCs.
While all these features were being built, we were reaching out to investors and accelerator programs to see if we can get some funding or industry connections. While close to 15 attempts failed, by God’s grace, we were able to get through the Nasscom incubator. Nasscom 10000 startup initiative is surely a boost up, as it gives resources to so many things. Glad that we got it through.
Finally at year-end, looks like, we have got a small piece of encouragement. Hope to share it soon.
In nutshell
- User base doubled and we observed an increase in user engagement.
- Gamification of features.
- Social reach of around 50k.
- 1M worldwide hotel inventory through OTAs.
- Aggregation of close to 85k experiences.
- Addition of Interactive MAP interface.
- Reaching out to investors and industry experts for possible tie-ups.
- Added technological by-products.
- Industry connects with logistic firms and auto tech firms.
