In this column, young entrepreneurs ask questions about issues they have encountered while building their ventures, and we get them answered by seasoned entrepreneurs and investors. You too can tweet your questions to @TOIStartups

'Booking holiday packages is the next challenge for online travel'

Question by Mahendra Pyati, founder, AAO hostels, an online aggregator for hostels With large online travel agencies like MakeMyTrip and Holiday IQ in India, is there space for more such companies in the emerging travel market in India? What are your suggestions to small or emerging online travel agencies?

Answer from Karana Mohla, Executive Director at IDG Ventures

Travel was the first area of adoption and growth for the internet/digital economy in India. Over the last 10 years, online travel agencies like MakeMyTrip and Yatra blazed a trail to solve the problems of booking of flight and train tickets and making hotel deals. In doing so, they helped create user behaviour that is online-led (and now largely mobile first) where the traditional issues of price, selection and convenience were addressed.

Online penetration is higher in segments like flights (50%+) and trains (35%+) whereas hotels (7-8%) and holiday packages (5%) are far behind. The next set of online travel companies must try to address user requirements from different perspectives. To give a few examples, Tripoto via its UGC platform, discovery and AI recommendation engine is enabling a new set of digital travellers to book hotels and holiday packages recommended by a trusted online community of fellow travellers. Ixigo, with its metasearch platform, gives customers up-to-date price selection across all channels and allows for the convenience of bookings to be fulfilled on its platform, thereby solving two fundamental needs together.

With growth being driven by a different customer set - largely Tier II and Tier III cities and a younger, mobile-first user with greater spending needs -- the opportunities for online travel companies remain vast. Just FYI, wouldn't call Holiday IQ a large online travel agency (it's part of MMT). Instead, probably, include Yatra along with MakeMyTrip as a large online travel agency.

'There's no trust deficit in the startup ecosystem'

Question by Barkha Sharma, founder of Bash, an HR tech firm

Due to the lack of longevity of a few startups, there seems to be a trust deficit in the startup ecosystem in India. What would be the best response when enterprise clients raise this concern with startups like ours?

Read more from the original source:

'There's no trust deficit in the startup ecosystem' - Times of India