During their college days at IIT-Bombay, Kovid Kapoor, Rohit Shroff, and Prateek Chauhan were always on the lookout for weekend holiday destinations. Their friends too scouted for little known places to visit. They soon exhausted all the travel options available online and realized two shortcomings in the industry: “The destination choices offered by most websites are limited and generally populist in nature, leaving very little options, especially if one is a power traveler. In that scenario, travelers have lesser independence in choosing a destination and have to depend on what is being offered,” Rohit found. That’s where the idea for Holidify came from. After the trio graduated from IIT-B, they worked with some startups briefly, and launched Holidify a few months ago.
Kovid Kapoor
There are several startups evangelizing destination discovery currently as more and more domestic travellers prefer to head to the unknown, far flung places. In fact, personalized destination discovery, adventure and experiential holidays, activity based trip planning are all being sold aggressively in India. What differentiates Delhi based Holidify from other startups in this space is that Holidify offers map-based approach which enables users to have a broader perspective of the destinations.
Holidify helps travellers right in the first step of trip planning. It helps users find the perfect destination, and removes the bias of popularity which typically comes in a list or a grid view format. The startup ensures that even if user arrive on the website with no preference in mind (beach or a hill-station, etc.), he/she can still start browsing places by themselves.
Prateek Chauhan
Besides a map-based approach, Holidify has comprehensive travel guides. “Our content team has created the best possible guides for each destinations on our page by using various online and offline resources so that our users get all the information at one place,” Rohit says. The guide helps users to decide on their final destination and also plan their trip , things to do, what and where to eat, options to stay, travelling within the city with hand-picked images of the destination. On personalization front, the startup ensures that users see only what they want to see “We are using a social connect which helps users create their profile, store their travel information which we use further to customize the site for them,” says Rohit.
The startup is currently in beta stage and Rohit says that the traction so far has been very encouraging. “We released our private beta product this month and are inviting users in a controlled manner, even though requests for invites have been overwhelming, that too without any publicity,” he adds. Currently, Holidify focuses on collecting feedback which they say has been constructive till now. The company will be soon opening its website to everyone. “We don’t have a direct competitor when it comes to destination discovery. However, in due course of time, we would be competing with the likes of mustseeindia.com, ixigo.com and holidayiq.com.
Rohit Shroff
The entire process of starting up is indeed much more challenging than it looks from the outside, says Rohit. The major challenge for Holidify is how to get the right people on board. “Getting talented as well as motivated people for almost negligible money is very difficult, especially techies,” adds Rohit. Another challenge was working with almost no funds. The trio didn’t have much savings but they didn’t want to compromise on the quality of the product. “This made the entire process a bit slow, but, it’s better to be slow rather than compromising on the quality,” says Rohit.
Currently, the company is focusing on building the product. In the next few months, Holidify would be looking only at the Indian market and will tie-up with offline and online travel agents so that it could also help users in executing their planned trips. In the long term, the company would expand to other geographies, help users plan their multi-city trips and raising funds to grow quickly and build team.
Visit holidify.com for a private beta access.
Another vacation, another trip to plan. So those in charge will ask friends and family for suggestions. Kerala? Then you definitely must visit Trivandrum and Kovalam, Maharashtra? Then visit Lonavala, Matheran and Alibag, Goa? Then it’s Baga, Anjuna and Palolem.
So what of places that are less-known and non-commercialised? For them, there is Holidify - a destination discovery platform just for India. Holidify is a venture started by IIT-ians Rohit Shroff and Kovid Kapoor to help people discover lesser known destinations to vacation in, in India.
“When you want to go on vacation somewhere, we currently ask our friends about it. It’s very unstructured and with my friends it’s very limited information about a place that I will receive. That’s the problem we are trying to solve, we don’t want people to be restricted,” says 23 year old Rohit, co-founder at Holidify.
The Product
Holidify was pulled out of private beta and launched into the public domain on January 7 this year. The portal is a destination discovery platform which has listed over 300 destinations to visit in India.
The portal has three options Explore, Weekend Trip and Surprise for users to pick destinations from. All three are shown to users in an interactive map-based UI, thus allowing users to access and plan a trip even while being unfamiliar with the place.
“Our focus lies on destination discovery and we have built our innovative UI which enables travellers to browse through destinations of their choice rather than forcing them the usual popular destinations.” explains Rohit.
The ‘Explore’ option lets you pick from a list of destinations across the country and plan impromptu trips. Its map based user interface and neatly categorized destinations are easy to navigate. Readily available filters like Best Time & Distance make it easy for the user to figure out destinations.
The ‘Weekend Getaway’ provides users a list and number of places that can be visited over a weekend. The ‘Weekend Getaway’ section targets more than 70% of travelers living in metro cities by giving information about locations close to them. While the ‘Surprise’ option generates a random destination for users to visit.
Holidify provides complete information on getting to the destination, best time to visit, where to stay and what to eat, apart from users tips and reviews from having visited the location for all three options. The company has also affiliated with Expedia and Yatra, and help users pick out flights to different destinations within Holidify itself.
The bootstrapped startup has invested Rs 2 lakh so far and claim to have received over 4,500 visits within 24 hours of the launch. “In the very first week, we have almost received 15,000 visits. We keep on receiving 500-1,000 visitors on a daily level now,” says Rohit.
Dealing with Competition
Experiential travel and trip planners are not a new development to the travel sector. Companies likeTripadvisor, Ixigo and startups like Traverik also operate on similar grounds. So how does Holidify differ from its peers?
“We are not an OTA, nor are we like portals like Tripadvisor. We do the initial controlling of what goes into the site ourselves to ensure quality. We don’t crowdsource. Because then it gets complicated and there will be no point to the site. Good, structured information just vanishes, that’s the problem with sites like Tripadvisor,” explains Rohit.
The company also adds that since the decision to add a listing if independent of revenue angles like that of having hotel or flight partners in a particular location, there is little bias involved.
Monetisation & Expansion
Holidify plans to mainly monetise using its affiliate partners Yatra and Expedia and the affiliate commission gained from them. “Our monetisation model is seamlessly integrated into our product, enabling our users to execute their travel plans,” explains Rohit. The team is currently in talks with Olacabs to partner with and offer cabs to users.
The currently India-only startup with a 2-member strong team plans on building a core team of 4-5 people over the next 6 months and gradually expand abroad as well.
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