You do not need to use complex computer science to agree with JoGuru when it says people spend a lot of time researching global trips and putting all the pieces together.
But it has studied the market for over a year to understand this key pain point and has built an algorithm-driven itinerary planner.
Users of JoGuru will be able to create itineraries, browse/edit existing itineraries created by other users, review and recommend a trip, connect with fellow travellers, and post questions about trips.
Once the user selects the list of cities to be visited, JoGuru lists all the point of interests (attractions) in those cities. When users select point of interests, the system creates a visual itinerary.
When user is in the process of creating an itinerary, system informs the user about the travel time and mode of transport between two attractions, list of eateries available around an attraction point, open/close time of attractions, and also ticket prices (wherever applicable).
User will be able to drag and drop attractions to suit their timing, enter the time they wish to spend in an attraction, and the system automatically adjusts timings of other attractions. Practical situations like a user adding an attraction at a time when the show is closed, insufficient travel time between attractions to reach on time are all handled.
The company was founded by three people:
- Praveen Kumar, CEO
- Saket Newaskar, CTO
- Karthik Ramachandra
- Holds an MBA from IIM Indore. He has about three years of experience in companies like HCL and Akamai.
JoGuru has a team of 18 technologists in Pune. The company has raised a seed fund of about $200,000 from a Pune-based angel investor and it is currently planning to raise more funds.
Kumar tells Tnooz why the founders started JoGuru:
"Newaskar, Ramachandra and I were planning to go on a bike trip from Delhi to Leh. We started researching content on the internet about which bike to use, what permits to take, what food items and spares to carry. It took us nearly a month to put all the data together. Later, we found out that people spend insane amounts of time on the internet for a self-planned vacation. Hence the idea of JoGuru was born.
JoGuru is a one stop solution to know all your travel worries like where to go? What to do? Where to stay and how to plan itineraries?"
JoGuru says the current US market size (according to comScore) on activity booking, travel packages and hotel reservations is around $25.2 billion and the relevant market for it would be around $3 billion.
The company is also working on a meta-search for hotels, and very soon it will implement the same for experiences. Ultimately, both these models will be deeply integrated with itineraries for revenue generation.
Q&A with Kumar below.
Describe what your start-up does, what problem it solves and for whom?
JoGuru is an online social travel network. It offers itineraries, experiences, answers to travel queries with user generated content of about 700 cities convoked by travel enthusiasts.
Our core feature is the 'Algorithmic Itinerary Planner'. This feature is allows a travellers to plan his/her trip in an interactive way by adding attractions in a city or from multiple cities.
We have developed an ingenious algorithm which optimizes the route chosen by the user depending on distance between two cities/attraction points, and timing of point of interests. It also provides the best mode of transportation.
Our itinerary planner displays critical logistical information like the tentative time a user can reach a particular attraction, listing various eateries, ticket prices, nearest modes of local transportation etc, all under one roof.
Market Gap
- The global travel market is crowded with services for booking hotels, flights, activities and deals. The industry is severely fragmented.
- The online user experience for a leisure traveler is still broken because very few players exist who help a user plan – “Things to do” at their travel destination.
- Today, a user has to spend significant amount of time online to plan a perfect trip which may involve multiple cities, multiple destinations and multiple preferences – 8 to 20 websites, 5 to 40 Google search queries, 0 to 3 questions postings on social networking forums, 2 hrs to 2 weeks of research time .
- Customizing a trip based on user’s likes, interests and previous trip history is a challenge yet unsolved.
How are we differentCurrently there about ten websites globally that allow users to plan their itineraries, but none of them is close to solving the user’s key pain points. We are different from all other itinerary planners in 3 major aspects:
- We have an algorithm that produces optimized travel route that demonstrates sequence of places to visit as per distance between them and their opening and closing times. And preferred mode of transportation.
- The design is completely different from all the other products and it is extremely easy and engaging for the users to use.
- The itineraries are directly accessible through Google search queries.
Why should people or companies use your startup?The market gap/pain points described above are the biggest reason why people/companies should be using our product.
Other than going viral and receiving mountains of positive PR, what is the strategy for raising awareness and getting customers/users?
PR and viral campaigns are effective ways to get attention. In order to get better traction from users, it is important to be there when a user searches for a service like ours, therefore we are actively looking out at SEO and PPC campaigns.
How did your initial idea evolve? Were there changes/any pivots along the way? What other options have you considered for the business if the original vision fails?
12 months ago, JoGuru was very different than what it is now. The biggest difference is our new itinerary planner. We understood that the major challenge for travellers today is the amount of time it takes to find logistical information like ticket prices, open/closing timings, nearest eat-outs, bus stops etc. All these learning over the past 12 months have spawned the “Itinerary planner”.
We do have a plan B and plan C in place. One of them is around an intelligent weekend trip planner.
Where do you see yourselves in three years time, what specific challenges do you hope to have overcome?
Three years from now, we would look at ourselves as an itinerary planner website which has a complete integration with hotels and experiences. We plan to create a database of itineraries for over 1000 cities globally.
We would expect to have a brand recall from a user’s perspective, i.e when the user is trying to plan a trip, s/he should come to JoGuru.
What is wrong with the travel, tourism and hospitality industry that requires another startup to help it out?
For a year or so, we did comprehensive study on travel trends and demand in the market. Behavioural studies and trends helped us scrutinise that today's traveler spend ample amount of time online to make their travel plans.
It was obvious to see the painstaking efforts taken by travellers. We just wanted to mellow it down and hence the idea of JoGuru and its core feature - "itinerary planner".
Tnooz view
As JoGuru says, there are really a number of players in the itinerary planning business. Few of them include Tripobox [TLabs here], Tripomatic [TLabs here], Plnnr [TLabs here], Holidayen [TLabs here], roadtrippers [TLabs here], mygola, and Traverik [TLabs here].
As we write this TLabs, there is a Bangalore-based startup (that did a beta-launch last week, watch for TLabs soon) that focuses only on itinerary planning.
Among the list of features that JoGuru has, the heart of it is its visual itinerary planner. It is well designed, easy to understand, gives practically useful information like show times and ticket prices, overall it creates a good visual about a trip.
But, players like mygola and roadtrippers have equally superior itinerary planning interfaces too. JoGuru has added a social layer to its product to accelerate the itinerary generation process.
JoGuru wants to create an itinerary bank. One key question that arises regarding this is - There are really good itineraries in JoGuru system, at the same time there are also itineraries that are created by users to test the system. How to distinguish between good and bad itineraries? When a high number of itineraries are generated in future, how will the system weed out un-usable itineraries?
The most difficult part of the startup journey is yet to come for JoGuru, and that is to generate revenue.
Consumers' adoption of mobile/tablet is only increasing when it comes to trip search/planning. It will be interesting to see how JoGuru replicates its visual itinerary planner in a mobile/tablet app. Recently, Mygola launched its iPad app and the founder explained in detail why they first chose to build an app for tablet, and not for mobile.