Tushky : For Exciting Experiences in Travel and activities.

Are you a travel freak? Do you love traveling but never have the time to plan and arrange your trip? Or you are not able to find out interesting places to go, interesting things to do.

GeekOnNet is showcasing another hot Indian startup (Tushky.com) that will take care of planning and arrangement of your trip to make it memorable and adventures. Tushky, an online marketplace to buy, sell or promote exciting travel experiences or experience related activities, in Mumbai and nationally, to provide an alternative to the impersonal approach of large tour companies and legacy travel agents.

Tushky is founded by a team of IIT Bombay, alumni:

Tushky is a hub for any experience-seeker to connect with local experience-provider and vice-versa. Tushky is for travelers who will love to live through the experience instead of just looking at it. The "been there, done that" era of fleeting visits to famous sites is well and truly over - travel virgins excepted. The modern traveler wants to take home a memory, not a memento.”

Tushky works only with a pick of providers, who can offer the best experience in their domain. Each experience is authenticated before putting them online; hence the buyer is sure of the quality of the experience.

“We added activities in our bouquet of products since, travelers are active 14 hours a day, but typically spend only six hours with the primary lure or attraction (the primary reason for visiting). That leaves an additional 8 hours for secondary activities or diversions. What is there to do after 5:00 pm? Downtowns can fill this role: providing entertainment, events, shopping, dining, etc. in a pedestrian-friendly setting.” Mr. CEO adds.

By providing a user-friendly platform, with a built-in community to promote the experiences across Facebook, twitter and Gmail, the team believes that, they will be able to claim a substantial stake of the $26.7 billion activity and experience market, which this year has become the fastest growing segment of the leisure travel market (with revenues surpassing those of cruises and car rentals combined). Tushky’s goal is to become the largest destination for travel experiences and activities worldwide, with an initial focus on Mumbai, where they plan to grow organically as local experts add their tours and experiences and from there, branch out nationally and internationally.

“Travel has seen tremendous innovation in flight and accommodation booking, especially with sites like Hipmunk and Airbnb disrupting the industry,”

“But once these reservations are booked, travelers still rely on old-school (and costly) guidebooks, travel agents, and large tours to plan their itineraries. It’s the blind spot of the travel industry.”

Tushky makes money by taking a percentage fee from those offering experiences (“local experts”). It anticipates additional revenue streams coming from affiliate partnerships with companies offering flight and accommodations, which would also provide their users with a fun and easy way to plan a trip they feel good about in just a few clicks.

Tushky is entering a market dominated by Makemytrip, cleartrip, Travelocity and other online travel agencies that have added activities to their offerings, as well as popular travel guide, The Lonely Planet, which has been expanding its online presence and recently added activity booking to their site through the large tour aggregator, Viator.

Mr. CEO says “What will differentiate us from these larger companies is our ability to reach and appeal to small, independent tour guides and individuals who want to share their world and expertise with travelers while making extra cash, as well as to travelers who have lost trust in existing industry platforms and crave more authenticity in their travel experiences. Further, we are bullish about the promotion feature on our site. We are very tightly integrated with social networking sites, because we believe that people love to share and brag about their experiences and expeditions”.

“The large OTA’s are not concerned about providing the unique, backdoor experiences that many travelers want,” says Mr. CEO. “That’s the market we’re trying to address first.”

Tushky.com
11/43, Yeshwant Nagar, S.V. Road, Goregaon(w) - 62
Phone– 022 28714472/3
Info@tushky.com

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contrich.com : Outsource your Website Content

It’s always a pleasure to write about the Indian Startup who is solving the problems of other startups/ businesses and helping them to grow. Good optimized content with very strong SEO is the heart and soul of any web based startup/business. Content outsourcing is a necessity for businesses who want to build a strong online presence with quality content but do not have a dedicated content team. Not only does content outsourcing save time and resources, it allows you to dedicate your time to more pressing things such as promoting your business and developing new product ideas.

Contrich.com (a web product by ByteClip Technologies ) helps you to outsource your web content to content writer/freelancer online. Contrich aims to redefine the process of developing and tracking your website content in a collaborative manner. Contrich bridges the gap between issue tracking systems and content management systems to improve content quality on web pages. It provides clean and innovative interface to capture content issues on a web page.

Company: BytClip Technologies.
Product: contrich.com
Founder(s): Vinay Kumar Singh (B.Tech.+M.Tech. IIT-Bombay), Jayant Upadhyay (B.Tech.+M.Tech. IIT-Delhi), Amit Chandel (B.Tech. IIT-Bombay, MS - University of Toronto) and Manish Pal (B.Tech.+M.Tech. IIT-Delhi)

Before jumping into the outsourcing business you should have some answers ready on your table :

• How do I decide the best fit provider for this job? Will a work sample from the provider help me with this?
• How can I clearly specify my content requirements?
• How can I monitor the work progress?
• How can I review the written content and provide feedback in a timely manner?
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) : How can I effectively specify my SEO requirements and check that the content written by the provider is meeting those requirements?

Since long, the answer to all of these questions has been communication with provider via email and word documents. These are the two most common and widespread used approaches, but it’s time we really thought about the fact that they do not provide the complete answer to any of the questions posed above. It’s time we decide whether these old ways are enough for us. These modes of communication are simple and effective for articles and blogs, but when it comes to writing content on web pages - they have some serious drawbacks. Lets list a few of them out here:

• The provider sends you his sample writings but the content belongs to some other domain and you are not able to judge whether the provider has the required domain expertise.
• You receive the sample work in an email or in a word document attached in the email, but you are not able to visualize your web page with this content written on it.
• The Content send by the provider does not fit in the particular section of your web page. You may need more content or truncate some of the received content.
• You may want to review the content while it is in the development phase(rather than after completion) so that you can bring up issues and provide early feedback.
• The provider can write the content and test its SEO effectiveness using a multitude of tools available on the internet. However, true SEO effectiveness can only be calculated when the content has been integrated into the page as search engines also consider the html tags when calculating your website’s ranking. The delivered content might not meet your SEO expectations and your integration effort may be wasted.

All these and many more of such problems deteriorate productivity due to increased number of development/review/verification cycles, and may lead to poor content quality under pressed timelines. Contrich tries to solve these issues with its collaborative nature and a very simple workflow.

How Contrich works:

The following sections will demonstrate this fact with the homepage of a sample clothes website and some workflow screenshots.

HomePage of a Sample Clothes Website

Requirement Specification

You can start by creating a ticket for your web page and mark the sections where you need content. You can edit the marked sections and specify the nature of your content requirements in each of them(Refer the screenshot below). Here, the sections marked in brown are where you want content to be written.

Requirement Specifications

Getting the Sample Work

Create a test account for the provider and assign the ticket to him. You can mark the sections where you want him to write sample content(Refer to the screenshot below). The provider will then write his sample content in these sections.

Getting the Sample Work

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The provider(and even you) can check the SEO Report for a web page which shows the most significant words and phrases on the web page. This helps him in doing iterative development where he is able to achieve your SEO expectations during the content development phase itself.

SEO Report

Content Review

You can review the content written in any of the sections and report problems on it. The problem sections of a page are marked in red and thus easily identifiable by the provider. The provider can view all the reported problems on a given section and modify the content accordingly.

Problem Reporting

View Reported Problems
Finishing the job

No more searching through your email attachments and word documents – the provider just has to update the ticket and assign it back to you. You have the final html page with the complete content written on it!! Now you can easily extract the page from Contrich and integrate it into your back-end system.

Try contrich.com and do share your experiences with us.
Source Contrich Blog.

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WDYL.com by google – What Do You Love?

www.wdyl.com is Google's new product based search engine that was launched quietly today. WDYL (What Do You Love?) lets you search across all the google products like 'Google Translate', 'Google Trends', 'Google Books', 'Sketchup', 'YouTube', 'Google Alerts' at one place.

As usual the user interface of WDYL is very simple and clean with single search box with a button image of white heart on blue background. Cute... The interesting part is that when you brows WDYL without www., you get a 404 (page not found) error.

Type in search box and click on heart, WDYL will display search result from different google’s products on single page neatly arranged in a grid format. There’s a slider on the left part of the page which you can move to quickly access bottom of the page. A big thing that is missing here is Google search result. I think Google search result was supposed to be the first one to be included in this. I have no idea why Google has excluded "Google Search Result" from WDYL?

The concept of WDYL reminds me of iGoogle, a service that lets you add simple apps/websites to your own personalized portal. Overall, it’s a cool idea. You will be able to browse more of the found content without leaving the page. I also found out a few Google products that I didn’t know existed. Cool Idea but I can’t see much use of it in long term. I am including WDYL in my Google’s failed products list. Just another failed product by Google.


WDYSAWDYL (What Do You Say About WDYL(What Do You Love?)?). Why don’t you try out WDYL with different search query and share your interesting discoveries and experiences with me through comment to this post below?

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Google +1 Vs Facebook like button

For past two-three months, google has been using google’s + 1 button on its websites and this is also available to the third party websites. Google +1 button wants to encourage user engagement and social interaction. This is an interesting idea, clearly influenced by the Facebook “Like” button.

With a single click, Google users can recommend a service, a website, an article, or a topic. Consequently, their friends, families, networks or even the rest of the world may easily see their recommendations. For example say you want to search best pub in Bangalore and you will be able to see recommended pub sites, your friend has pressed the +1 Button on. This is an interesting idea, clearly influenced by the Facebook “Like” button, but very much depends on people taking the time to press the +1 button. The Like button on Facebook allows users to publicly show they like a certain person, status, event etc. meaning it is far more a tool of self-expression than recommendation. Both Facebook’s like and Google’s +1 button aim to increase users’ exposure and awareness to an association of persons of the same trade, pursuits or mutual interests, and subsequently gather them through a social network.

Google and Facebook values what their users are sharing with their friends. They use this to know more about the users and to be able to place appropriate ads (targeted marketing) on web pages. Google will be able to personalize the user's search result and search ads. With the help of the +1 button, people with Google accounts who are signed in may see the recommendations from people in their Gmail or Google Talk chat list.

In my opinion, Google +1 will not be able to compete with Facebook in the social networking arena. Facebook has the edge in this area because its users spend a lot of time sharing their thoughts, links, and photos to their friends. This is a problem for Google because the Google doesn't have access to this information and it can’t be indexed as well.

My concern is, do we really need Google +1? We already have FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn and hundreds of social networking websites too. I think Google has arrived too late to make a big impact in the social networking world. Is google +1 another failed products by google?

I have added +1 button at the start and at the end of this post. Please do share it.

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Google to scan 250,000 old British Library books

Google Books has an ambitious mission statement: "Google Books is an effort to make all of the knowledge contained within the world's books searchable online."

That's a tall order, but the company will make a dent in it with a new agreement to scan 250,000 books from the British Library.

The books, pamphlets, and periodicals are all out of copyright and come from between 1700 and 1870. This is a nice companion project to the British Library's new 19th Century Books app that will eventually put thousands of old books on your iPad.

To put it in perspective, these books were generated during some famous events you may have heard of, including the French Revolution, the invention of rail travel, and the end of slavery. Google will foot the cost for this mammoth digitizing effort.

The digitized books will be available free online through Google Books and the British Library site. Readers will be able to view, copy, and share the text for non-commercial uses.

Thank you Google. I appreciate it.

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OlaCabs : Book a Car/Cab online!

We have already seen, how internet has revolutionized Train/Flight ticket booking. This technology can also be used to change our ground transportation system. GeekOnNet is featuring another hot startup from Mumbai "OlaCabs", started by 2 IIT-Bombay Alumnus.

OlaCabs offers car rental services for local use as well as outstation use. You can book cab/car online or over the phone.

Why do you want to book cab/car online? GeekOnNet is mentioning some benefits of online car/cab booking.

1. You pay the right price for your journey
2. The security of door to door service
3. Guaranteed journey
4. Ease of use
5. 24 hour service
6. Airport and other journeys
7. Excellent for business use

In an exclusive interview to the GeekOnNet team, Bhavish Aggarwal, co-founder of OlaCabs and a very good friend of mine speaks about his company, its targets and future plans.

Venture Name: Olacabs.com
Founder(s): Bhavish Aggarwal, Ankit Bhati

The Geeks: What inspired you to start olacabs? What are the services offered by OlaCabs? What is the specific problem that OlaCab is solving?

Olacabs: I had once rented a car for a weekend trip with friends to Bandipur from Bangalore. The driver turned out to be a cheat. He stopped the car in Mysore en route to Bandipur and asked to be paid more than what had been decided earlier. He was so rigid and ill mannered that we had to leave him there and continue our journey by bus. This led to the business idea of using technology to offer a better and more predictable experience to consumers and improve efficieny for the car owners/drivers.

We offer car rental services for local use as well as outstation use. You can book online or over the phone and be assured of a reliable, safe and quality experience.

The Geeks: What’s your Business & revenue model.

Olacabs: We work on a pay-for-performance model. We just charge a commission in whatever sales that we bring to car owners. Also, to get access to the technology platform, we charge them a small fee. Other than that, there are no other costs that operators have to bear.

The Geeks: How difficult/easy for you to convince cab owners about your services? What obstacles have you overcome?

Olacabs: We have tied up with many car operators in Mumbai. They are very receptive to our concept as we work on a pay-for-performance model. The harder part is sourcing car owners. Since it is a fragmented industry, getting to the owners is a time consuming process.

The Geeks: There are few big players in this market. So, how can you differentiate OlaCabs from them?

Olacabs: most cab booking portals are plain vanilla websites with price listings. Our strategy is to focus on the backend with car operators because that would ensure a certain level of quality and predictability with respect to the consumer experience. We intend to bring all car operators and all taxis on to a single technology platform to enable real time inventory distribution, nationally.

The Geeks: What prospects are you visualizing for your company 5 years down the line? Are you going to implement something new (e.g. Mobile phone booking, smart phone’s app for cab booking etc.) to your business?

Olacabs: The entire ground transportation industry in India is run in a very opaque, inefficient and ad-hoc manner. There is no service guarantee or price transparency for the consumer and operators are also troubled with no structured channel through which customers can be sourced. We believe that technology will help make this industry efficient and drastically improve the consumer experience in years to come. We are definitely considering developing mobile bookings and smart phone apps in the near future!

The Geeks: After working in the world’s leading S/W firm for more than 2 years, what led you to quit your job and start your own venture? What are the rewards of owing own business over a nine to five job?

Olacabs: I had always wanted to be an entrepreneur since my college days. After spending 2 years in my job at Microsoft, I started feeling bored and restless. So I got together with Ankit and we decided to start a company. I left my job and moved to Mumbai to start Olacabs.
Working on a startup means you are the guy responsible for everything. The buck stops with you. The thrill and challenge of designing a company bottom up is beyond comparison and something you just cannot get in a job!

The Geeks: Any suggestions for future entrepreneurs?

Olacabs: The biggest joy and the biggest challenge in entrepreneurship is finding a real and challenging problem to solve. Most of us first generation entrepreneurs have a tough time finding the right problem. But once that is figured out, the joy of solving real issues for real users and seeing people benefit from your innovation is beyond comparison! So just be persistent!

Olacabs provides the simplest way to book a Cab/Car. You enter your city and your need. Olacabs searches the available inventory of its partners and provide you with a list of results and prices of different available cars from different operators. You can see rating of that operator, what other customers said of them, and then book it on Olacabs.com. Or you can call Olacabs at (022) 322-65-652 and they'll help you through the process!

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