MustSeeIndia.com, a free travel planning and sharing site
For a small company with limited resources, it’s very important to stay focused and make the best use of time and resources. There are tons of things you can do; it’s important you approach them in a planned way.
-Vikas Rana, MustSeeIndia.com
Founded in July 2008, www.mustseeindia.com is a free travel planning and sharing site with the aim to make travel in India easy. Must See India is the brainwave of Vikas Rana, Sanjay Goel and Karan Nahata.
In their words, Must See India provides information on almost all the tourist destinations in India. The information ranges from places to see, weather, maps, driving directions as well as user reviews.
For people in initial stages of planning, they also suggest destinations depending on the month, duration and what kind of holiday you are looking for.
In an interview with webneetech.com, Vikas shared how he stuck with this idea and how this idea is unique and will help people.
______________
Founder (s) detail:
There are 3 founders.
Name: Vikas Rana
Age: 29
Qualification: BTech in Computer Science from IIT Delhi
Work experience: Over 5 years of leadership experience in at Trilogy.
Strength area: Leadership, Product Strategy.
Name: Sanjay Goel
Age: 28
Qualification: BTech in Chemical Engineering from IIT Delhi
Work experience: Over 5 years of product management experience at Tribal Fusion.
Strength area: Product Management.
Name: Karan Nahata
Age: 30
Qualification: BTech in Instrumentation from NSIT, Delhi
Work experience: Over 5 years of management and consulting experience at Trilogy.
Your strength area: Product Development.
_______________________________
Website Detail:
Website: Must See India ( http://www.mustseeindia.com )
The tag line or punch line of your site: One Stop Travel Guide to India
When did you launch your business? Jul 2008
Short information about your business:
Must See India is a free travel planning and sharing site with the aim to make travel in India easy. We focus on:
□ Information: Provide complete and reliable information on all tourist destinations in India (when to go, where to go, what to see, maps)
□ Planning: Help travelers in trip planning and booking, sharing photos and experiences.
Your target audience: All Travelers in India
Monthly visits (page views, if any) on website. More than 2 lakh unique visitors (> 1 million page views per month).
Future/Expansion plans:
We want to provide additional services related to trip planning and grow our portfolio by partnering with companies aligned with our vision.
_______________________________
Company Detail:
Company’s Name: Must See India
How much did you invest to start this business? Rs 5 lakhs
What was the source of funding? Personal savings
Company Blog (if any): http://blog.mustseeindia.com
Number of employees: Just the 3 founders
Number of branches: Only one – we work from our apartment
Phone: 9845-132-717
Office Address:
C3-1205, L&T South City,
Bannerghatta Road,
Bangalore – 560076
Email ID: vikas@mustseeindia.com
_______________________________
Interview (Q & A Round):
Q: How did you start your business? What made you to think to enter into a business?
I always had the knack of doing different things. I always enjoyed programming. In my college days when web applications were not that common, I created an online scrapbook, which was quite a hit. Later, during the time I was in job, I played around with a few ideas including a fully functional GPS receiver for car. I talked to a few more people about it but it didn’t materialize.
Travel was another idea I was very interested in. I have had a few trips to US the same year where I realized how online tools could simplify travel. I started exploring this for India and when I met Sanjay, we hit it off and decided to start out. We registered the domain in next few days and had the prototype ready in no time.
Q: Tell us in detail about your business, your idea and how it can benefit others?
As a traveler, all of us want to have a good experience. We want to avoid nasty surprises. That’s why we take time out to research about the destination and plan our travel.
We, at Must See India, help people in doing exactly that, in a much easier and faster way.
On our website, we provide information on almost all the tourist destinations in India. The information ranges from places to see, weather, maps, driving directions as well as user reviews.
For people in initial stages of planning, we also suggest destinations depending on the month, duration and what kind of holiday you are looking for.
Q: What are the important things which differentiate your business from other? What is your USP?
Simplicity.
Travel is a crowded space. There are thousands of websites, travel agents vying for your attention offering all kinds of complex packages. For a normal person, it’s very confusing, and time-consuming. It takes the away the fun part of holidaying. What you are left with is unending logistic planning which eats into your precious time.
What we do is simplify this process. For any person that comes to our site, we want his / her questions answered in the quickest time possible. We have tried to ensure that we have all the information at one place and present it in a manner that is easy to consume. Users seem to like what we are doing as demonstrated by our tremendous growth in a very short span of time.
Q: What is your revenue or business model?
Our revenue comes from hotel, bus and flight bookings as well as advertisement on website.
Q: In the next 5 year, what are your expansion plans and where do you see your business 5 years down the line?
Our aim is to become one stop travel solution for travelers in India. We are aware of the enormous task in front of us. We’ll need to figure out a way to achieve this in a timely manner. Some of the things we can provide in-house, we’ll look out for partners for others. We struck some deals recently; there are some more strategic partnerships that we need to figure out.
Within 5 years, I want Must See India to be the first thing that comes to mind when people think about travel.
Q: What were the biggest challenge(s) you faced in your journey as entrepreneur till now?
For a small company with limited resources, it’s very important to stay focused and make the best use of time and resources. There are tons of things you can do; it’s important you approach them in a planned way. One wrong step and you could be history. Startup industry in general and Indian travel space in particular is filled with numerous examples where companies have either shut down or are struggling not because of competition but their own mistakes. For us, it has been a challenge to stay on course.
I think we have done pretty well overall so far. We made mistakes early on but recovered quickly. For a startup, it’s essential to figure out a plan to achieve the value you are going to provide otherwise there are chances for you to go haywire.
Q: What is the biggest mistake you made as an amateur entrepreneur?
When you start out, you get lots of advice from people on what to do and what not to. You see lot of successful startups and everybody decodes their success in their own way.
We too did that and did that in somewhat wrong way. In earlier stages, we felt only “cool” things sell. So, we started out with creating cool things like fancy trip planner and travel maps. We spent a few months on that. But very soon we figured out two things:
1. Despite our best efforts, we were nowhere near cool. It takes hell lot of effort and very costly for a startup.
2. Even though people say they “want” cool things, they actually “need” something else. You have to be smart to figure out the difference.
We could have tried some more and become the coolest thing in the market, but we weren’t sure if people would still use it. Worse, everybody has their own definition of coolness.
So, we did the next best thing – work on things people actually need. And when we did that, there was no turning back. We grew every single day from there.
We were lucky to have survived it, most startup fail at this stage.
Q: What you want to say to the new entrepreneurs or the one who wants to start his/her own business?
For amateur entrepreneurs, it’s very important to realize that they need to work on their ideas, not somebody else’s ideas. You get loads of advice, and of all kinds – what works, what not, how it works. However, you need to listen and filter it out to your own advantage.
You can read hundreds of articles on how to start a startup, but it’s upto you to figure out what’s applicable to you.
Work on the things that YOU want to do. Work the way YOU want to do. Because there’s nobody to listen to your excuses when you fail.
Q: Who is your business idol and why?
I follow Joel Spolsky and Paul Graham closely. Their ideas resonate with me.
From Indian entrepreneurs, I like Sanjay Anandaram.
Q: What’s your ultimate business and life goal?
This world is far from perfect. When you go out and take a look, you see lots of things wrong. I would be very happy if I can contribute and fix a few of these things.
Related Posts
Bhiring.com
Flairenglish.com
Inspiring Quotation Website
Jobkeeda.com
MAHALAXMIUDYOG.COM
Mansasys.com
MEDIABIZIP.COM
Oasisgrace.com
OPERATIONSWINEFLU.COM
SIAMFRANCHISE.COM
Thenetworkfranchise.com
WAY2FRANCHISE.COM
Webneetech.com
Your site rocks. I have never found so many destinations in goa which you have mentioned. Need to go to goa again. twitting you man.
Leave your response!