This week, I attended TIE Travel event at Sheraton in New Delhi and it was a brilliant experience to know about current & future trends around Travel. Whole day was full of energy, ideas and entrepreneurial discussions. This was my first experience of a TIE event and hope to join them for relevant events around Travel, Digital Photography and Technology. Folks like Deep Kalra (CEO of MakeMyTrip), Aloke Bajpai (CEO Ixigo), Abhishek Gupta (Head, TLabs), Padmaja Ruparel (Angel Investor & Founder, IAN), Puneet Pushkarna (Solmark), Turochas Fuad (CEO, Travelmob) and Taranjeet Singh (Twitter Business Head, India) shared their thoughts around trends in Travel industry.
The day started with lunch and then Ajay Jain (Founder of Kunzum, the Travel Cafe) started the event by inviting Deep Kalra for opening note. Deep shared some of the best Indian Travel innovations happened in last few decades and then shared his thoughts around future opportunities in Travel space. One of the greatest innovation was IRCTC website and he forced everyone in the room to imagine the situation when you have to queue-up and wait for your turn to book a train ticket. And there were chances of not getting ticket after waiting in queue for 3 hrs. Comparison with old experiences can make you appreciate the advancement in technology and how it’s helping us today. I can’t imagine to queue-up for booking a ticket. It seems that IRCTC has helped in building confidence of Indian consumers to use Debit/Credit cards online.
Here are some quick facts about IRCTC -
- IRCTC website allows to book ~7200 tickets per min.
- Nearly 42% of customers pay for IRCTC booking through Internet banking & 24% use Credit/Debit cards.
- IRCTC was listed top in most searched term of the year 2014 by Google India.
- Around 1.2 Lakh people can use IRCTC site at one time. And in one of the reports, IRCTC is busiest OTA in the world.
- Now days IRCTC book average of 5 lakh tickets per day.
- IRCTC generated revenue of 15,000 crores last year which is higher than E-Commerce giants like Flipkart & Amazon India revenue.
- Over 31 crore tickets are booked through IRCTC every year.
- IRCTC also provide I-Ticket facility (like E Ticket) which means your ticket will be send by postal after booking through online.
- On March 1, 2013, IRCTC recorded highest booking count of 5.02 ticket booking in its life time.
- Over 1 million people checks PNR status daily in IRCTC site.
I was eager to know more about it, so check another interesting discussion at - http://www.quora.com/Indian-Railways/What-are-some-interesting-facts-about-IRCTC-website
Deep also mentioned Redbus, Tripadvisor and cab aggregator Ola. OYO was mentioned multiple times in different panel discussions and definitely most of the folks see huge potential. Metaserach, Last-minute bookings, alternate accommodation, budget hotels, internet/telecom capabilities and role of Smartphone was also discussed in length. Airbnb, Oyo, Zo, Treebo, FabHostel etc came in these discussions. Of course, Ixigo was also a highlight when it came to Metasearch.
Deep also mentioned Redbus, Tripadvisor and cab aggregator Ola. OYO was mentioned multiple times in different panel discussions and definitely most of the folks see huge potential. Metaserach, Last-minute bookings, alternate accommodation, budget hotels, internet/telecom capabilities and role of Smartphone was also discussed in length. Airbnb, Oyo, Zo, Treebo, FabHostel etc came in these discussions. Of course, Ixigo was also a highlight when it came to Metasearch.
During the event, 3 startups pitched their idea and it was contest. Audio Compass, Orahi and Myles shared about their business idea and problem they are solving.
Various discussions happened around economy sharing and industry is expecting lot of innovations in this space. Companies like OYO and Ola are already doing well in India.
Most of the leaders in Travel industry see potential in shared economy, personalization, mobile-only, vernacular, Augmented reality, wearbles, predictive modeling and marketplace. There is an interesting fact about our country that most of the folks are accessing internet first time on mobile phones.
Bart Bellers shared some of the great innovations happening in global travel industry and the most impressive was Bluesmart luggage bags. Check out more about Bluesmart luggage bags on internet.
There were some panel discussion about In-Travel solutions and problems. This is another area where industry expects lot of disruptions.
Business head of Twitter was part of last panel discussion and he made some of the best statements around digital marketing. I found most of his thoughts very sensible. It seems that Twitter is also coming up with Twitter-business through which businesses would be able to plan their campaigns, which would be data driven and scientific.
It was a day well spent and got exposed to lot more. A post here can't do justice to the experience, but definitely TIE travel has shared so many ideas to explore and post about.
I highly recommend this event to Entrepreneurs in Travel space. TIE members could register with 2000 Rs and fees for non-members was 3000 rs.
Best Wishes !
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