Why am I working on TravelTech Startup despite high competition with OYO, Booking.com, Agoda, MMT etc.?
Back into 2014, I took admission in college and everyone dreamt to go on a trip with college friends. I always saved money so that I can go on a trip. Till the completion of my graduation, 70% of my friends, Never went on a trip.
Reason?
The budget didn’t fit into their pocket.
So I started travelling around the country, sometimes alone and sometimes with a few friends. Because most of them were not able to afford the expenses of a Trip.
If we see, Today 78% of people still rely on the travel packages so that they can enjoy a hassle-free experience. I was always disappointing for me to go alone. So I started looking into the market so that I can come up with some sort of solution.
In 2016, I convinced a few of my friends to go on a trip and I promised that They will complete the trip within a little amount.
We were 13 people and decided to go Mussoorie from Delhi for 4 nights and 3 days. So I started planning the things so that I can reduce the budget as much as possible. As many people do, I also looked for budget travel package on all possible travel websites like Make My Trip, Agoda, Booking, Goibibo etc.
It was costing us Rs 8000/person. After spending 10–12 hours on websites, I started looking for the Mussoorie so I can save extra bucks over there. I look into every small detail of the places and I decided to book the train tickets for the train. I found out a hotel over there with less occupancy and I called the owner to book the rooms.
The cost of the hotel rooms was around 5000 rupees for 13 people for a night and I convinced him to provide the rooms for 13 people in 2000 rupees because I knew that the hotel always remains unoccupied due to high competition in the market and I was 2-star hotel.
I booked the hotel for 2 nights in 4000 rupees for 13 people. So we started our journey from Delhi to Dehradun and took a Tempo Traveller from Dehradun to Mussoorie.
We reached Mussoorie at 3 am in the night and stayed in the hotel.
In the morning, we wanted to go on sightseeing but I came to know that Taxi charges were very high to go to a place. It was costing Rs 3000/3 person. I decided to look into something else to go over there.
Mussoorie is the queen of the hills, every house owner uses their roof as parking. I saw, One person was sitting on the chair with Tea and newspaper near the hotel. I went to him to ask for more details to save bucks and I came to know that he had a passenger car but didn’t drive because of the lack of the customers and taxi union’s fight.
I asked him if I can hire his vehicle to go to places, He agreed and asked 600 rupees for the 13 people. it was a happy moment because I save almost Rs 12,000.
we stayed in the Mussoorie for 2 night and 3 days. and we came back to Delhi by train. Everyone asked the total expenses so they can pay back to me.
I calculated the complete expenses and It blew my mind because the total cost of 1 person was Rs 1450 rupees. I saved Rs 6550 from an average travel package.
I started researching about it and I came to know that there are 625 Million Indian middle-class people who want to travel but can’t. because the budget is not fitted into their pocket.
I went to 15–20 more places to find out the secret sauce of travel and after gathering the data. I came up with the idea of “PockTrip”.
PockTrip is a platform to help people to travel within their pocket and promises to cut your expenses more than 100% of the actual cost. PockTrip is also focusing to help service providers like hotels, cab owners etc to increase their revenue by standing out of the competition.
I built a team of extraordinary people from big travel companies which has a total of 100 years of experience in the Travel market. We will launch the product soon.
Before launching the product we have thousands of waitlist and we are honoured to get a big response before launch.
If you are a techie, travel expert and Investor then write to me on Rajnish@pocktrip.com
