Padhaaro, India's first Greeter Program, gets featured in a story by Entrepreneur magazine. To know more about Padhaaro, visit www.padhaaro.com

1. STARTUPS
ON THE ROAD
A few brave startups are making a place for themselves in India’s big-gun dominated travel
and tourism market by tapping into niche opportunities
D
etc., MakeMyTrip holds a large market
share in the internet travel planning
market in India. The moral of this success
story truly is to dig your heels deep into
sectoral gaps and hang in there till you
don’t emerge a winner. A slew of startups
in the travel industry are doing just that.
Finding the crevice
Bengaluru-based Chitra Gurnani Daga,
and Abhishek Daga, both 28-years-old,
are avid trekkers. “During one of the
treks, it started to rain and the company
organizing the trek was not prepared for
BMAXIMAGE
eep Kalra’s MakeMyTrip based
in Gurgaon was founded in
year 2000 and is one of the
few startups of that time to
have survived the boom and the bust
over the decade. Looking back, one of
the prime reasons for the online travel
portal to weather the storms is the fact
that it had the first-mover advantage in
the segment.
The company went on to get listed and
successfully set up offices in different
parts of the world. Today, with others like
Cleartrip, Expedia, Travel Guru, Yatra,
EXPERIENTIAL BREAK: (left to right) Chitra Gurnani Daga and Abhishek Daga
10 0 Intelligent Entrepreneur
February 2014
it,” says Chitra Daga, CEO, Thrilliophilia,
talking of the lack of professionalism
with the existing players in the market—
which led her and Abhishek Daga to
co-found the Bengaluru-based travel
website in 2009.
Bengaluru-based Ish Jindal, 23,
along with Saurabh Jain, 29, too found
a unique gap in the travel services which
they wanted to plug with their website,
Padhaaro in January 2012. Jindal,
Co-Founder, noticed that international
tourists in India rarely get an opportunity to connect with the local people

2. www.entrepreneurindia.in
BMAXIMAGE
LOCAL FARE : (left to right) Ish Jindal and Saurabh Jain
because of language barriers, mindsets
and cultural differences. “Many locals
want foreign tourists to experience their
culture but the latter do not know whom
to trust,” notes Jindal.
Down south, 42-year old Pradeep
Murthy launched Wayanad-based Muddy
Boots in 2009 with a focus on North
Kerala and Coorg and put in a seed capital of `1 lakh. “I did my engineering in
Calicut and over the years would go trekking in North Kerala. At best, there were
only individual guides and no organized
professional operators were available,”
he says. Also, he wanted to change the
notion in peoples’ mind that adventure
is risky and suited only to young blood.
TRAVEL
HIGHS
§ THE
TRAVEL
AND
TOURISM
SECTOR
WILL GROW
AT A CAGR OF
12 PER CENT FROM THE ESTIMATED `2.2 LAKH CRORE IN
THE YEAR 2013 TO `6.8 LAKH
CRORE BY 2023.
Source: KPMG, December 2013
Out of the box
A common observation among founders of all the three travel and adventure
startups is that tourists look for out of the
ordinary experiences. Sameer Guglani,
Founder of The Morpheus, an accelerator says, “Companies have to look at
niche segments within the travel industry now.”
Daga and Abhishek’s Thrilophillia
essentially checks the quality of services
provided by partners and keeps auditing
them. “There is a checklist that has over a
100 things,” Daga says. “We curate activities that customers can choose,” she adds.
After targeting individual customers for
six months, the co-founders realized this
model was a long haul.
For faster revenues and scale, in early
2010 they shifted their focus to corporate clients but continued to service individuals. Thrillophilia currently provides
about 1500 pan-Indian experiences
tagged as ‘experiential holidays that
create value during a trip.’
“We even have military guides and
experienced members of the team helping out to maintain the highest level of
professionalism,” claims Abhishek. “We
are priced slightly higher compared to
a few competitors but are reasonable
for the quality of service we provide,”
Daga affirms.
Thrillophillia has executed outbound
trips for about 300 corporate clients so
far including Cisco, Google, and TCS
among others.
Similarly, the Padhaaro founders
decided to kill two birds with one stone
and designed their model in such a way
that both sides benefit from it.
Apart from creating a network of
locals who tourists can trust, they saw
they could also help the locals incentivize
their skill sets and talents in their interactions with tourists.
Padhaaro, as it stands currently, has a
‘greeter’ model and a ‘freemium’ model
for foreign tourists to interact with locals.
The greeter model is free for users and
is based on the idea of connecting international tourists to locals for an indigenous flavor of a particular locale. The
Intelligent Entrepreneur
February 2014 101

3. STARTUPS
www.entrepreneurindia.in
BMAXIMAGE
FOR NATURE: Pradeep Murthy
freemium model is an expert-led model
wherein people with a unique skill-be it
a mehendi designer or a local folk music
artist, can interact with tourists. “We
haven’t tied up with any businesses, only
with individuals,” mentions Jindal.
Aulia Nastiti, a tourist from Indonesia
says, “I only had friends in Delhi and Pune
and knew no one in the rest of the country. However, in each city, I always had
meaningful experiences. The Padhaaro
greeters who are residents of the city
warmheartedly accompanied us as we
wandered around the city.”
Padhaaro has served 150 tourists
like Nastiti, and has greeters in 20 cities
across India.
Muddy Boots’ advantage point is in
creating activity plans that large tour
planners are often unable to do, Murthy
points out. “The company focuses on
outdoor activities and provides options
of varying levels of challenge. It could be
a simple walk in the woods, an outdoor
camp or a trekking holiday,” Murthy says.
Interestingly, Muddy Boots has
cornered the hospitality sector too in
the region and partners with resorts to
provide activity options for hotel guests,
besides working with families, schools
and corporates. A third angle to its model
102 Intelligent Entrepreneur
February 2014
is a partnership with tour operators in
the UK to design activity holidays for
foreign travelers.
Muddy Boots activities are priced
between `1,500 to `1,700 excluding
transport, per person per day. Murthy
tells us he is looking to expand to
Rajasthan soon.
Investors go on a trip
These models have garnered investor
attention. Thrillophilia raised investment in September 2013 to the tune
of $200,000 from Hyderabad Angels,
iLabs Venture Capital Fund, Navlok
Ventures and Centre for Innovation,
Incubation and Entrepreneurship at IIM
Ahmedabad. Padhaaro instead went
through the accelerator program at The
Morpheus and received `5 lakh from
them in September 2013 as well.
The main source of revenue for
Padhaaro is the freemium model, introduced only a few months ago. The
company keeps 30 percent of the amount
charged by locals from tourists.
“We are currently focusing on the
greeter model,” says Jindal of Padhaaro
says. To ensure that greeters are reliable
and trustworthy, Padhaaro conducts an
interview and a senior greeter in a city
meets new greeters. “It is important for
us to build a brand tourists can trust,”
Jindal says.
Now a 30-member team, Thrillophilia
was set up with startup capital of `25
lakh. The company broke even in the first
20-24 months and profits thereafter have
been reinvested into the business. The
founders plan to expand to Bhutan, Sri
Lanka and Nepal in the near future.
Raghu Bhathina of Hyderabad Angels
says, “There is an inherent need for
outdoor experiences, so the market is
definitely big.”
The challenge says Bhathina is that
it’s mostly an offline business and many
of the companies Thrillophilia looks
to partner with may not be online.
“An online and offline combination is
needed,” he says.
Guglani too reiterates the pitfalls
of being in the travel trade. He says,
“Differentiation is important and building a brand that customers trust at the
same time does not happen easily.”
As far as marketing goes Guglani says,
“You can’t defeat a MakeMyTrip when it
comes to spending. So companies need
to focus on good quality content, do-it
-yourself travel planning solutions and
on community building.”