Vineet Budki, Guiddoo’s VP Strategy
Vineet Budki, VP Strategy for Guiddoo, tells WIT how it wants to be the Skyscanner of Tours and Activities that enhances a traveller’s in-destination experience.
Q. Describe the business, core products and services in one paragraph
Guiddoo is a start-up that does tour guiding and gctivity meta-search for B2C (main focus area) and B2B clients (secondary focus area) on the mobile platform of iOS and Android.
The core services are:
- Audio visual tour guides currently to world gamous monuments, but extending across 12 tourism verticals like museums, festivals, cuisine, people, etc in the coming months
- Tours and activities meta-search gathered from players like Viator, GetyourGuide and others.
Q. Who are your key customers?
In the B2C space our core customers are leisure travellers originating from Europe, US and Southeast Asia in the age group of 18-34 years who are independent travellers and strong mobile users.
Q. Who are your key partners?
In the B2B space we have a few clients in the pipeline who are OTA’s, tour operators and tourism boards.
Currently we are deploying the in-destination experience for MakeMyTrip for Dubai, and will expand the same across Europe and Asia based on the success of the project.
Q. What business are you most likely to be compared to?
Probably the best way to compare Guiddoo would be to mix the audio guiding (which is a content driven model) and a meta-seach for tours and activities.
Simply speaking, we are trying to be the Skyscanner of tours and activities that enhance a traveller’s in-destination experience.
Q. What problem are you trying to solve for your customers?
There are three major issues that we are trying to address:
- The difficulty faced by tourist spots (monument and museum operators, etc) to address the growing number of tourists due to a growth in traffic from Asian countries, and the absence of qualified tour guides to handle the tourist queries.
- The need of languages to provide information to travellers (audio and textual), which can act as a deterrent to travel. In our MakeMyTrip product, which is focused towards Indian audiences, we will have Hindi and Gujarati initially and launch it in other Indian languages gradually.
- The growing chocies in the tour and activity segment, and the gap to provide customers a one stop shop comparison of different options based on costs and activity type.
Q. What problem are you trying to solve for your partners?
The major problem that we are trying to address for our partners (B2B Clients) is the complete loss of contact between an OTA/tour operator/booking engine/travel meta-search after the booking phase. Our products are catering specifically to the in-destination experience and will help partners keep their customers engaged and connected at all times during their travel.
Q. What financial support did you have to launch the business?
Guiddoo has been bootstrapped to date, and has been growing organically so far with 80,000+ downloads and a few strong B2B clients like MakeMyTrip. Going ahead we are actively fundraising to quickly scale our presence in South East Asia and Europe.
Q. Who validated the idea first – investors or customers?
Customers (both B2C and B2B) have validated the idea so far, as there is strong engagement on the product (double than the travel industry average based on flurry analytics)
Q. What is the revenue model and strategy for profitability?
The revenue strategy going ahead is to have 10-12 main B2B clients that have their in-destination experience powered by Guiddoo and gradually develop the B2C model, which will make Guiddoo a more scalable and sustainable product over time.
Q. What is the market opportunity? How scalable is this business?
The market size for this opportunity is US$150 billion annually based on the latest UNWTO reports on international leisure travellers who are mobile users and travel to tourist spots. Based on the report, the target segment is 300 million strong and spends on an average of US$50 on products and services like tour guides, tours activities and tickets among other things.
Q. Competitive analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
Strengths:
- Experienced team with strong expertise in travel, technology and ecommerce
- First mover advantage in the tour and activity meta-search space and strong focus on the mobile platform
- Technology vision – we plan to introduce innovations like GPS/beacon based guiding, group tours, handsfree and VR solutions
- Partnerships with major travel players like MakemyTrip
- Strong exposure across geographies and awards and recognitions like Red Herring, WIT Bootcamp, Global App Summit and Alpha Programme at the Dublin Summit
Weakness:
- Access to resources and capital, as we are still a boot strapped startup and are growing at a rapid speed.
Opportunities
- Growing tours and activities market on the B2C side
- Focus on In-Destination products by major travel players (Expedia, MakeMyTrip, SkyScanner, etc) and presence of partnership opportunities for tour guiding content for Guiddoo
Threats
- Low barriers to entry on the mobile technology front (not content!)
Q. Who are the team members and advisors?
Advisors:
- Abrar Ahmad – Partner TravelCapitalist Ventures
- Pawan Borle – SVP Fly Dubai
Core Team
- Nidhi Varma – CEO
- Vineet Budki – VP Strategy
- Darshan Sharma – Head Marketing
- Naumaan Khan – Technology Lead
Q. Why do you think you are the best people to make this vision happen?
We believe that we are the right set of people to drive this vision forward because we have the expertise in the relevant fields of travel, technology and ecommerce ,and everyone clearly sees the way forward and the potential of a product like Guiddoo. Besides all of us are passionate about travelling and strongly believe in the product concept and its utility for fellow travellers.
Q. What’s the motivation behind doing this?
Taking the liberty to speak for the team here, the motivation for us to do Guiddoo is to build something that is valuable for fellow travellers that enhances their in-destination experience and is also a sustainable business model that can give returns to the stakeholders.
It is our way of creating our name, brand and space in this enormous and crowded travel space.
