Travelyaari leverages technology solutions to simplify and streamline bus ticketing processes. Established in 2007 by Aurvind Lama with 200 employees, the company is looking to make life easier for Indian travellers by bringing in service providers and travellers on to one end to end integrated platform. Travelyaari’s core strength is to design, build, and run technology solution in a highly unorganised industry. Amit Kumar, VP, Product and Digital Marketing, Travelyaari, shares his views on how their services make them stand apart and ahead of their competition.
Priyanka Saxena Ray
Going forward, would you be adding more means of transport under the booking portal to be booked by the customer?
Travelyaari, an e-commerce platform from Mantis Technologies, is committed to building a smart and robust “road travel” network platform. The opportunity in “bus travel” itself is huge since the bus industry is considerably larger than railways or aviation industry. While we are open to all modes of surface travel modes, we are currently working on to cover all kinds of travel options provided by bus including both intra-city and intercity.
How are you different or better as compared to other bus-booking portals?
Mantis technologies is the single largest repository of private bus operators with exclusive online sales right on inventory. When it comes to the end customers, we provide them with several advantages.
- Buying from source: In any industry, when an end consumer buys directly from the source he/she is guaranteed of inherent benefits as well as the reliability of goods and services that are being offered. This ensures superior post-booking customer care support as we are directly in contact with the bus operators in our inventory.
- Faster booking experience: Built on the same technology platform on which more than 50% of private bus operators operate means Travelyaari is designed to offer a faster booking experience. This further translates into better chances for an end user to get the preferred seat in a peak season irrespective of the network he/she uses.
- Best Prices: Most of the times, Travelyaari prices are the best prices one could have bargained for. In fact, we are the few e-commerce platforms in the bus travel industry to provide ample instant cash discounts paired with exclusive Mantis Operator offers, loyalty discounts along with privilege card benefits, and PG cash backs from our payment partners.
- OMS verification by Customer care: Travelyaari deploys its Customer Care team to do a proper bus scheduling verification by calling each Mantis bus operator every day. This ensures freedom for last-minute bus cancellations which is unforeseen.
- TYSURE assurance: In addition to OMS verifications, Travelyaari offers a unique assurance program which refunds the double the fare amount in case of cancellations from the operators’ side. Moreover, customers are provided with accident insurance cover for bus travel at a nominal rate.
- Privilege card, loyalty program to reward frequent travellers: One of the few portals to offer a full-fledged loyalty program, Travelyaari rewards the frequent travellers with up to 5% of bus fare (with no upper limit) through its Privilege Card programme. This gets even more enticing when a customer chooses a Mantis brand operator as their individual loyalty systems are tightly coupled with Travelyaari systems to give incremental benefits on top of Privilege Card program benefits. In short, it pays to be loyal to Travelyaari and its operator network.
Do you feel that people who opt for Bus Travel are not so tech savvy perhaps…? How has the response to the portal been since the launch? (In terms of growth)
No, for any e-commerce platform, the audience needs to have a certain degree of tech savviness to interact and transact with the application. However, we at Travelyaari follow a UX design philosophy of “Function above form” to ensure that we make the experience as easy for a complete novice as possible. Travelyaari still grows at exponential rates, which are associated with early-stage start-ups at high double-digit growth rates. The differentiating factor of our growth rate is that it is more sustainable and follows business unit economics, unlike others which are based on the GMV-driven non-profitable growth model.
What are you doing to increase the awareness of the portal amongst the masses?
We have deployed both online and offline campaigns across different channels to reach out to our target audience. Unlike our immediate competitors, we have taken a more focussed approach where we spend more on targeted bus travel category than generic travel category. This ensures a better engagement experience overall with a higher lifetime value for end travellers. We use various digital channels such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, print media, SMS, emails, push notifications, etc. to engage with our target audience. We also partner with our bus operators to run various awareness campaigns at ticket counters and inside buses from time to time to raise awareness.
Where do you see yourself 5 years from now?
We want to improve the experience of every bus rider in India through our technology solution. We have already enabled 55% of private bus travel in India through our ERP solutions, GDS solutions and Travelyaari e-commerce platforms. We want to scale it further to reach tier 2, tier 3 cities and remote villages while providing last mile connectivity through our ride sharing solutions both within the bus and outside. Our latest product offering MAVEN, the in bus mobile ERP solution is a step towards the same which has the capability to improve the in-bus experience to multiple dimensions right from providing various smart solutions and payments to entertainment and safety. With the launch of smart cities and push towards greener India, we want to continue working towards the launch of more products in this space.
