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This Entrepreneurial Story is about Vikas, Sanjay & Karan who Founded ‘Must See India ‘ located in Bangalore.
Founders – 
- Vikas Rana: CEO. BTech in Computer Science from IIT Delhi.Worked in Trilogy Software for 5 years on enterprise software.
- Sanjay Goel: COO. BTech in Chemical Engineering from IIT Delhi.Worked in Infosys and Tribal Fusion.
- Karan Nahata: CTO. BTech from NSIT.Worked in Trilogy for 5 years in Configuration products.
When Started: Jul 2008
Location: Bangalore
What motivated you to start your Business?
When you look at the travel sector in India, you see lot of companies with various models. You can book some of the components of the trip, but travellers struggle with many of the items. We as passionate travellers ourselves understand that pain point and are working to fill this gap by providing door to door services hassle free.
Tell us about your Business
Must See India is India’s first and only customized holiday booking platform. It allows customers to create and book their holiday package in 15 mins without any call center intervention.
Customers can book their holiday package on their own much like they can order a book online or book flight tickets. This brings efficiency and transparency from customer’s perspective. We have reduced the average booking time from 19 days to 4 days in past 8 months. Our conversion is 12% which is way above industry average 3%. Our repeat usage is also very high.
(Below Answers by Vikas Rana)
What is a Day in a life of you like?
As CEO of a growing company, majority of my time goes into strategizing and making sure all teams are working in sync with each other. On a typical day, I
- Start by spending half an hour with checking the key metrics- no. of bookings this month, latest feedback received, team snapshots.
- Half an hr meeting with product team to go over the status of tasks and brainstorm new features.
- 2-3 hr meeting with various team leads (meet everybody at least once every week).
- An hr or two reviewing plan for next 2-4 weeks.
- Rest on misc items like mails, reading blogs, taking interviews.
I recently became dad of sweet little baby girl. I spend majority of my off time with her.
One particular skill you got right and gave you best results.
As a startup, you need to constantly reevaluate your path and adjust your course accordingly. You oscillate between thinking long term and short term constantly and juggle with a multitude of responsibilities. Being able to context switch fast enough has helped me quite a bit.
What have been your biggest challenges in running your Business so far?
Quality is one skill that is still not rated very high in India. I believe in delivering an excellent quality no matter how big or small the task. You need to emphasize the same with everybody you interact with, every single day. In travel sector, there are lots of touch points with customer and it is tough getting everything done the right way from all the parties involved.
How did you overcome these challenges?
Quality has been one of our biggest focus, that’s what we think about every day of the year. We are probably the only one among major players having a separate dedicated quality team which has absolute powers to touch base with customers at various points of their trip and get it resolved asap. It works beautifully and has given us upwards of 96% customer satisfaction.
What have you found the most effective way to get new clients?
By far SEO and repeat customer base are the best and most cost effective channels.
What advice do you give to other business owners?
Keep obsessing over quality of delivery and nobody can take away success from you.
How did you keep motivated through difficult times?
Startups have constant ups and downs. I try to keep reminding myself of why we have started up and do my best to reach that vision.
What are your Marketing, Funding and Team Building Strategy?
Our marketing is ROI oriented, we measure everything. We try to do few things, but make sure we get enough bang for the buck. We focus a lot on SEO, repeat customers, word of mouth, not so much on social or paid marketing.
We have angel investment from K Ganesh. (Founder Tutorvista).
We keep our team lean and have very high bar for hiring.
Your Achievements?
Must See India is the largest travel information portal in India with over 5 million hits per month. And this is achieved with with zero spend on marketing. We won Manthan Award for best e-Travel portal in South Asia in 2011. We were also selected among the best 5 travel websites by Times Travel Honours.
Whats your favorite quote?
“My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to make them better” – Steve Jobs
Who inspires you?
Every entrepreneur I meet has something to teach me.
Do you have a Business Philosophy?
CEO of my last company Trilogy, Joe Liemandt, used to say that one should look out of the window every morning and ask yourself “Am I excited to go to work today? If the answer is no, you should change your job immediately.” Same applies to my company,we have only people who are excited doing what they do.
Contact links
Facebook | Website | Twitter | LinkendIn
More Info
https://www.startupfreak.com/must-see-india/
Startup Freak wishes all of you, All the Best!
