Imagine travelling to your dream city or country you never been to or know nothing about and yet being able, just by using a mobile app, to get local experiences. Or to book yourself hotels, curated itineraries and various fun activities.
Trip Tap Toe (T3), an online startup platform, simply does that. It accesses hotel options from worldwide suppliers and funnels them into a single feed for users to eliminate hassles of comparing multiple sites for the best prices.
“The app is like your personal assistant, it has simple user friendly interface, which can help book you a hotel, room, activities and do last minute web checking for you all over a chat,” says Manuraj Singh Johar, founder of Trip Tap Toe.
When every month there is new portal and app coming up, T3 claims to save your valuable time and provides best deals. “You will not have to go through the hassle of comparing multiple sites for the best hotel prices,” adds Manuraj.
T3 was founded in Gurugram, India in 2008 as a hardcore MICE organisation. The app offers real time assistance to travellers ensuring their trip remains stress-free and the travel experience uncompromised.
Manuraj, being an Economics graduate from the Delhi University and a frequent traveler himself, decided to start his own travel venture with a mission to simplify the online travel booking experience.
Having a decade of experience in hospitality, Manuraj uses it in taking care of business and expansion strategy with a focus on B2B alliances and consumer marketing.
Business Model and Competition
T3 makes available to users hotel options from global suppliers in a single feed and forwards commissions received from airlines as discounts, to offer seamless service and unmatched deals.
Similarly, for flights, it forwards commissions received from airlines as discounts to users ensuring they get the most lucrative deals. The platform is also associated with worldwide network of travel suppliers to curate personalised itineraries that offer local experiences to travellers.
The startup claims to be unique in its business model, when other travel startups generate revenues through marketplace, it endeavors to follow the principles’ of service industry by being single point of contact right from planning to execution stage. Speaking about the business model, “We get the arrangement done in-house. We source it from suppliers and then we further sell it to clients,” he says.
It does not pass leads to third party suppliers to take commissions or redirect the user to third party affiliates sites. The company claims to have more than 1000 suppliers, who help travelers ensure local experience, worldwide. It has 60 percent of its order coming from travel.
Gurugram-based startup takes full responsibility for travelers from start to end of a trip (including the complete itinerary). T3 fulfils this commitment to its users in an effective manner through its in house developed “Concierge Chat App”, which can be downloaded from its site.
Startups competing in the same segment are Goomo, Tripfactory, Triphobo, and Tripholiday. T3 does not intend to be marketplace like Travel Traingle and Makemytrip.
Growth and Revenue
According to the company, it raised its first private investment in 2014 of $100,000 from an HNI. In 2013-14, the company revenue was Rs 1.46cr. In the next year, revenue rose to Rs 5.69cr. In the year 2016-17, its revenue climbed to Rs 6.12 cr following the second funding in Oct 2016 by R.S Sharma, Former Chairman & Managing Director, ONGC against stake of 26 percent. Following the deal, Sharma’s son, Nayan Prasar has joined the T3 board as Director.
T3 used its funding to deploy effective marketing strategies and upgradation of mobile & web platforms to make them even more vigorous and easy to navigate.
Continuing its growth trajectory in upward direction, during Oct 2016- Mar 2017, after second funding, it saw unprecedented rise of Rs 1.69 cr in its revenue. “We did aggressive marketing and increase the bandwidth in the office,” says Manuraj.
Manuraj now plans to expand its team, roll out strategic consumer led marketing campaigns and invest in technology upgradation. It had three members when it started, now it is 15 members team.
“We will soon expand our team across departments such as marketing, technology and sales as we are also expecting to open our international branches in Dubai and Hong Kong by this year end,” he concludes.
