A small idea can be converted into a billion dollar business: Saket Newaskar

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Vaneeta Punchvedi | 24 Nov, 2014
Acquiring the right talent is the biggest challenge today. Talent from India is going out and setting up innovation hubs. The Indian government needs to wake-up. A tiny innovation can be converted into a billion dollar business in the right ecosystem. We need to create that ecosystem!," said Saket Newaskar, Co-founder, TripHobo in a exclusive interview to SME Times.

TripHobo, a start up company in the travel planning space, is a custom itinerary planner that helps travelers to smartly organize their travel trips. It is a cumulative effort of small but dedicated team of travel enthusiasts.

On government's support towards SMEs, Newaskar said, "To be really honest, we have not got any help from any government for creating this business. The industry today need significant reforms in company laws, tax laws, labour laws to compete with the developed world for innovation and growth."

Excerpts of the interview...

First tell us something about your platform - TripHobo.
Saket Newaskar: A start up in the travel planning space, TripHobo is a custom itinerary planner that helps travelers to smartly organize their travel trips. TripHobo provides an intuitive platform that makes planning any trip an enjoyable experience. This is achieved through in-depth researched travel planning content and sophisticated algorithms and analytics clubbed in a simple easy to use interface. Triphobo also provides an innovative travel platform that helps young travelers connect with travel buddies around the world and share experiences. The company is striving to change the way people approach their travel planning.

On TripHobo.com you can find thousands of trips planned by other travelers. It is very easy for you to pick up any of these trips and customize them for yourself. If you do not find any trips that suit you, you can quickly plan a trip for yourself.

What made you start this?
Saket Newaskar: TripHobo was conceptualized in a small PG in 2011 in Noida when the three founders working for HCL as senior management trainees identified a gap in the online travel space and the lack of providers who compiled information in a structured fashion for online trip planners.

Will you please tell our readers that how TripHobo works?
Saket Newaskar: TripHobo is today the world's best trip planning platform. On TripHobo.com you can find thousands of trips created by travelers from all over the world. It is very easy to search for trips to various cities that you might be interested in travelling.

If you are not able to find a trip that suits you, you can immediately create your own trip. TripHobo has developed significant traveler assist technology by which a traveler can plan in a comprehensive way, cities to visit, various routes and modes to travel between cities, various attractions in cities, opening and closing times of attractions, preferred times to be at attractions, ticket prices of attractions, public transport, eatouts etc. You can optimize the routes using our home built algorithms based on theory of constraints.

Once you have decided the cities and attractions, TripHobo recommends the Hotels that are the best fit for the trip based on price and travel convenience.

There are lot more big and small players in this industry and so you must have a cut throat competition, what makes you different from others?
Saket Newaskar: TripHobo today is the world's largest and fastest growing repository of user created trip plans. Users can access more than 50k of these, view and edit them to customize. No other competitor comes even close to this scale. This is because the approach is unique to TripHobo.com.

Why we are succeeding is because we cater to almost all traveler personalities. There are travelers who want to plan a trip quickly and there are travelers who want to immerse themselves into planning a trip for multiple days. People may want to travel in groups. To top it all, travelers want to get recommendations from real travelers who have a good advice to give. All this is difficult to integrate into a single user experience.

We can proudly say that we have successfully been able to create an awesome trip planning experience which none of our competition has been able to replicate. We are therefore getting significant traction. We are today the world’s number one trip planner in terms of adoption and usage.

Client management and client servicing is the most important department and most difficult part to do for any company, how do you manage and serve your clients up to their satisfactory level?
Saket Newaskar: For us, the customer is our online user. The whole company is oriented to giving the best experience for the online user. We learn everyday about any inconvenience that is caused to our users. Every failure in our service is tracked and is resolved within 8 hrs. It is also seen that once a failure happens, it is taken care of permanently and is not repeated again. Thus every new user we acquire gets the best experience that is possible.Every new user also teaches us about what we can improve and what we are good at. We improve everyday.

According to you what are the major problems that Indian SMEs (Small and Medium enterprises) are facing?
Saket Newaskar: I would say that acquiring the right talent is the biggest challenge today. Also the red tape that we face in this country is extremely detrimental to the growth of SMEs. The industry today need significant reforms in company laws, tax laws, labour laws to compete with the developed world for innovation and growth.

And how could a small entrepreneur overcome these challenges? Any suggestion from your side?
Saket Newaskar: I would say that determination and persistence are the two biggest attributes that an entrepreneur should have. You cannot give up. I can just say this because we faced these challenges everyday and only a never give up attitude works in India. The day you give up or feel demotivated, by these challenges, you have to shut shop.

What do you think whether the government is doing all their efforts to help and support SMEs or not?
Saket Newaskar: To be really honest, we have not got any help from any government for creating this business. It has always been a hindrance. I have worked in various geographies across the world a businessman and engineer. I have seen other governments play an active role in creating technology companies and encouraging start-ups at the grass root level. Credits are easily available and an ecosystem has been created to help start-ups innovate and create value. India has a long way to go in that direction. Talent from India is going out and setting up innovation hubs. The government here needs to wake up and smell the coffee. Innovation is happening on every college campus. A tiny innovation can be converted into a billion dollar business in the right ecosystem. We need to create that ecosystem!

What are your expectations from the government for the betterment of the SME sector?
Saket Newaskar: My expectations are very simple. The highest priority should be given to innovation. If a small company is able to demonstrate that it can create innovative products or services and cater to the whole world, it should be immediately supported and liberated from all the unnecessary regulations. It should be allowed to focus on its innovation and growth rather than the red tape. It should not have to worry about unknowingly breaking any law that is so complex and misunderstanding some guideline that is written in some circular that it is unaware of.

SMEs have to pay significant amount of its revenues in maintaining accountants, lawyers, company secretaries, bankers etc who do not directly contribute in the innovation or growth of the company. All this money can directly go into hiring the right talent, training, investing in technology and long term innovation. SMEs today will benefit immediately if we are able to modernize our regulatory systems. We have a long way to go. I hope this modernization happens very fast.