A recent addition to the tours and activities sector is India-based PoshVine, a company that provides in-destination experiences to travellers.
PoshVine is a marketplace for anybody to list their tour guide services, define terms and conditions, and accept bookings. Currently, the company has over 1,000 experiences in India listed in site.
PoshVine was founded by husband and wife team, Richik Nandi and Garima Satija, in late-2011. Nandi is responsible for overall strategy, user experience and marketing, while Satija manages the customer and partner experiences.
Other three key employees are - Dhiresh Nagwani, manages the overall product and technology architecture, Gurucharan DJ and Mithila Porwal take care of sales and operations respectively.
In mid-2012, the company raised a seed round from MyFirstCheque, a Mumbai-based seed fund.
Nandi tells Tnooz the story behind the company:
"PoshVine actually started out of our personal experiences. We have stayed in multiple cities and we always used to struggle to find good recommendation on the best dining destinations, best things to do that would help us discover the true essence of the city.
"We used to travel quite often, both domestically and internationally, and we realized that booking flights and accommodation were pretty easy, but when it came to finding out behind-the-scenes offbeat things to do to enjoy the destination, it became a messy and time-consuming process.
"We found ourselves asking friends, rummaging through Lonely Planet and Conde Nast and resort to a lot of Google search. We used to make excel sheets of our shortlists – visit this neighbourhood restaurant, go horse riding there, do a heritage tour with a historian, etc. Yes, the process of searching was enjoyable itself, but even when we managed to identify some activities and restaurants in advance, booking these experiences turned out to be even more challenging. Most of such service providers were either individuals or small businesses and more than 80% of them didn’t even have a website.
"We strongly believe that it would be amazing if we spent as much energy investing in experiences as we do investing in things. Being avid foodies, we realized that food is central to any destination experience and that’s why we started PoshVine by focusing on dining and culinary experiences, as these were everyday needs. Over time, we have expanded to other categories as well."
PoshVine says it is in the business of recommending and enabling bookings for unique things to do.
In India, there are 18 million urbanites carrying 3G-enabled smartphones and using them regularly to find interesting things to do, book movies in multiplexes and searching for restaurants, flights and more. PoshVine says this is its addressable market in India.
When asked about competitors, Nandi says:
"The primary competition for PoshVine are word-of-mouth, online and offline publications, ranging from Conde Nast and Lonely Planet to various online forums.
"There’s a lot of direct and indirect competition in both the supply and demand sides of our business, ranging from TripAdvisor to Zomato, however, we are just focused on enabling real-time demand-supply management for amazing things to do."
The company's primary revenue model is the commission they take in every transaction.
Q&A with Nandi below.
Describe what your start-up does, what problem it solves and for whom?
PoshVine is a marketplace to offer, discover and book unique in-destination experiences. It connects curious locals and travellers with a variety of memorable things to do across multiple locations.
Everything from the more expected, must-do activities, like vineyard tours, heritage tours and hot air balloon safaris with wine tasting and insider access to the best restaurants to unique, top-shelf activities like gourmet strolls, behind-the-scenes cultural immersion tours, celebrity spa experiences, shikaar dinners, etc.
Anybody, be it a BBC journalist, a famous naturalist, a posh restaurant, a niche tour operator can offer unique experiences using the PoshVine platform. They can easily create activities and insider access programs, and PoshVine carefully curates them, embellishes them to ensure authenticity and quality of the experience.
End-users (travellers) can find offbeat things to do, and easily book them. Search for a 'perfect date idea' and PoshVine shows you multiple options of spending an evening with your loved one in very interesting ways. You can reserve your experiences using multiple payment mechanisms; enjoy pricing advantages with our Fair Price Guarantee and even request for personalisation.
We’ve stayed committed to offering high-quality activities and memorable things to do. So you can focus on what matters – creating memories that will last a lifetime.
Why should people or companies use your startup?
Unforgettable memories are built on special experiences that you share with friends and family. Yet, these experiences are difficult to find and even more challenging to book.
PoshVine brings such unique experiences to the fore, makes it easy for you to find what matters to you and makes it easily bookable via computer, phone or tablet. For every occasion and every one of your travels, with PoshVine, you can reduce your activity planning from weeks to minutes.
Moreover, we pride ourselves in going the extra mile in personalizing every experience for you.
Other than going viral and receiving mountains of positive PR, what is the strategy for raising awareness and getting customers/users?
The only strategy we have right now is to deliver memorable experiences for each user, so that he or she spreads the word in his or her circles.
We focus very scrupulously on generating social connections through our platform and we also do highly targeted marketing initiatives. Moreover, we empower each of our suppliers to do most of the marketing themselves.
When compared to similar startups like Travspire, Tushky, Highontravel, what are your differentiators?
Our strength lies in personalization for each user – both on the supply and demand sides. The personalization ranges from content recommendation to customizing each experience.
Moreover, our differentiations lie in the fact that we build a lot of tools for suppliers to aid them in promoting themselves and their experiences, manage their inventory and even improve their businesses.
PoshVine currently has a fast-growing inventory of 1000+ experiences, there are obvious differences in business models, but our ability to deliver unique personalized experiences will set us apart in the future.
How are you planning to address the concern of quality and reliability when you offer services overseas (out of India)?
Our process of curation is enabled by technology – experiences “people are talking about”, followed by human curation, aided by our network of ambassadors and curators.
PoshVine is a managed marketplace, so suppliers (we call them ‘hosts’) have the flexibility of scheduling, inventory management and various other tools.
We are in the process of perfecting the process at a unit level right now. In the last 2 months, we have extended to over 10 more locations in India alone.
How did your initial idea evolve? Were there changes/any pivots along the way?
The initial idea stemmed from our personal experiences of struggling to figure out the best foodie experiences wherever we stayed or travelled. That led to the birth of PoshVine.
Over time, we expanded our offerings based on the market feedback and the opportunity that we realized existed.
Where do you see yourselves in 3 years time, what specific challenges do you hope to have overcome?
In 3 years’ time, we aspire to be the trusted social concierge for the growing audience of aspiring affluents. We wish to carve out a space in consumers’ minds whenever it comes to interesting things to do in your city or when you are travelling.
The main challenges would be to balance the supply and demand in each market, and to ensure very high quality of user experience throughout the sales funnel.
What is wrong with the travel, tourism and hospitality industry that requires another startup to help it out?
We believe that the in-destination experiences market is pretty big and highly fragmented. Most of the individuals or businesses offering experiences have limited marketing and demand generation wherewithal and depend on partnerships or niche networks to do that.
PoshVine was started to bring such memorable experiences on one platform.
Tnooz view:
Tours and activities market is expanding significantly, and this trend is happening across the globe. Various dimensions of this space is getting addressed - reservation engine provider, platform that bridges locals to travellers, supplier management tools, etc.
Is there a market for PoshVine in India? Definitely, yes. Though there are similar kind of service providers like Travspire and Tushky, there is definitely a market given the diverse cultures in the country, numerous unexplored destinations, increasing disposable income.
User interface of PoshVine is neat and the content is organized well. Users can find an activity for as low as Rs 500 ($9) in the platform.
The market is very crowded with players, and the key here would be for travellers to trust the hosts. Since anybody can become a host, until and unless the host is a celebrity/brand, why would a traveller trust the host's offering? This is a challenge for every provider, not just PoshVine.
PoshVine has tried to address this challenge by providing a profile for hosts that display number of experiences hosted, experiences participated, reviews received.
It will be interesting to see what strategy PoshVine will adopt while expanding its services out of India.
As we said in an another Tnooz view, as platforms like PoshVine continue to grow in terms of experiences served, there is an increasing need to create a TripAdvisor-style grading system for hosts.
The FAQ section in PoshVine is worth mentioning. I have never seen such an exhaustive Q&A list in any other site. I wonder whether users will get any question that's not listed in their FAQ section.