9th November 2019:India’s leading trip planner -
ScoutMyTriphas won the prestigious National Entrepreneurship Awards 2019 (NEAS
2019) in the Hospitality, Tourism and Travel under A3 category of the
Enterprise Track.
In the award
ceremony today at PravasiBharatiya Kendra, ScoutMyTrip co-founders Deepak Ananth and VineetRajan were honored with the prize byDr.MahendraNathPandey, Minister of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship
along withMs.JyotshnaSitling,Jt.
Secretary of Ministry.ScoutMyTrip was recognized for its efforts towards not
just helping travelers but more importantly generating earning opportunities
for the youth.
On winning the
award, VineetRajan, Co-Founder of
ScoutMyTrip said, “We feel honored,
proud and most importantly thankful to have been chosen. When the government starts actively recognizing startups; it
is a sure sign that the country has a thriving ecosystem for growing
businesses. With NEAS, the government has successfully opened the doors of
opportunities for new entrepreneurs”.
ScoutMyTrip’s
unique business model allows regional travel experts and well-travelled
individuals to monetize their expertise. With this program, experts or Scouts
as they are called have been earning between Rs. 4000 to Rs. 6000 on an average
every month for the last 8 months.
Deepak Ananth, Co-Founder
added, “Entrepreneurs become successful
only because of their team, and this is even more true in the case of a
startup. So, the success mantra is to keep the team motivated by aligning them
to the vision; and taking them along every step of the way. Effective
leadership and team management play a crucial role towards building a motivated
team”.
Vineet and
Deepak are avid travelers themselves and have been part of many travel
communities over the last 15 years. They first came together to form a biking
club in 2011. After the success of the club; they started working on a way to
enable travelers plan their trips better with the help of technology. Over the
last one year, ScoutMyTrip has onboarded over 100 such Scouts
who have been monthly planning between 2-3 trips and earring in the range of
4000 to 6000 per month.
Along with
allowing customers hire virtual travel experts, ScoutMyTrip is also helping
travel agents increase business by allowing them to bid for the itineraries
planned by Scouts. With this, they have been able to complete the customer
lifecycle from planning to execution; and at the same time ensuring customers
save money by getting the best deals.
Over 900 million hours
were spent last year in planning trips browsing 17 websites on an average. After having traversed over so many
kilometers, the co-founding team saw the opportunity in this space and got
together to build ScoutMyTrip. Most OTA’s provide
booking for modes of travel and stay but no one helps you plan a journey.
ScoutMyTrip addressed this gap by allowinganyone to
plan a trip anywhere to anywhere while interacting with and hiring travel
experts (called Scouts) to help them fine tune their plan.
ScoutMyTrip addresses the uncertainties one faces on their trips.
The lack of information on where to stay, eat, and unique things to see is a
major problem that most travelers grapple with. By removing uncertainties,
trips become fun and they call this - ‘Mark and Embark’.
ScoutMyTrip’s model is very closely also aligned to the
country’s vision of encouraging Indians to visit 15 new places by 2022 as
espoused by the Prime Minister in his speech on Independence Day this year.
Indians can make this simpler by hiring a Scout; and have curated itineraries
handed on a platter!
ScoutMyTrip was
recognized by Z Nation Lab who invested in the company initially and from there
the company today have over 35,000 users who use their trip planner. Monthly
over 1500 trips are planned on ScoutMyTrip off which around 300 are planned and
perfected by Scouts for various customers.
In the long list
of accolades ScoutMyTrip has won includes winning the Maharashtra Startup
Week early this year by Maharashtra State Innovation Society. In Augustthis
year,ScoutMyTrip also represented India at the Travel and Tourism accelerator
in Indonesia organized by DIGITARAYA in partnership with tiket.com which
is one of the largest OTA’s in Indonesia. ScoutMyTrip was the first Indian
startup in any of the accelerator programs by DIGITARAYA.
With this
recognition by the Government, the journey has just begun and ScoutMyTrip is in
talks with various investors for raising capital of up to Rs. 3.5 Crores which
would be primarily deployed towards technology and expansion of the Scout
network to create more earning opportunities.
About
ScoutMyTrip
ScoutMyTrip is an AI driven road trip planner and
market place of travel experts called Scouts. Customers can either use the freemium
planner or hire a Scout. Once a plan is made, travel agents can bid for
fulfilling the user journey via their dashboard.
Travelers can create an itinerary for
their journey which includes destinations places of interest, hotels to stay
before starting the trip. As a planner, one marks their points of interests and
then embarks on a trip, hence they call it MarkandEmbark.
ScoutMyTrip is now building a multi modal trip planner on the
existing foundation of data science and analytics with flights, cars, trains
for Asia and the South East Asian markets.
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