There are 750 campsites in India. Research indicates that the adventure travel market size is around Rs. 1000 Crore and increasing 200% YoY. Market opportunity is huge; multiple researches done by Amazon and the likes have shown that employee productivity increases by around 200% immediately after a corporate offsite at a campsite.
Deyor Camps, founded in November 2015 by Dheeraj Jain, Aakaar Gandhi, Gautam Yadav and Chirag Gupta, exploited this huge opportunity considering the need for alternative travel in India along with adventure travel still being an untapped space.
In a candid interaction with BWdisrupt, Chirag Gupta, Co-founder, Deyor Camps talked about their product in detail.GenesisMy father is a carpet exporter based out of a town called Bhadohi, close to Varanasi. I have grown up seeing him achieve various feats in business and have always idolized him and aspired to become like him. I had taken interest in his business since 8th grade. After college I met Dheeraj who gave me the platform to launch a venture with him, which would solve the budget hotel experiential problems. We further went on to co-found Deyor Camps, which solves the only untapped travel, segment in India where we are solving the problems of Discovery, Trust and Experience around adventure travel (camps, cottages and outdoor activities).
OfferingsWe are creating a mass-market product with India's first chain of branded camps while cementing an underlying business around providing quality accommodation for adventure travel operating in a monopolistic nature in this sector. We are creating a technology platform, which will make booking camping trips as simple as booking a hotel room, hence, structuring a highly fragmented sector. We have signed exclusive contracts with all our campsites that binds them with us for the next 3 years.
We offer 3 types of tents; Dome, Alpine and Swiss Tents. Along with that we have a wide range of cottages to choose from.
HurdlesAfter a successful stint at Deyor Rooms, we had a clear idea about how to proceed with the business and had tackled a lot of challenges in the travel space so we knew just how to deal with them.
We had a successful pilot but had doubts about this business not being as perennial as we though it may be. After deep study we found that this is a seasonal business but our campsites are active for around 3/4th of the year.
Competition
We are the only company in this space. There are lots of fragmented camping companies but they are limited to 3-4 campsites on the higher side while we have crossed 100 campsites already on our portfolio.
Business ModelAs mentioned, we are the only ones in this market who have ventured in this space. We are operationally a year ahead of anybody even thinking about entering this space. We focus on corporate, mice events, institutions, schools, colleges and larger biker and 4x4 groups.
We average an 18% gross margin on each booking and are expecting this to go up to 22% by end 2016.
Target Group & Expansion plansWe focus on corporates, mice events, institutions, schools, colleges, and larger biker and 4x4 groups. We have an order book of INR 1.2 Crore in place. We are building up a strong team of cluster managers to ensure that we can take more bookings and service them without compromising on the quality and experience.
We have 100 campsites currently and are in talks with 70 more to onboard them by September 2016.
TractionWe have already got revenue of INR 32 Lakh since we opened for bookings in February 2016. We have a gross margin of INR 4.65 lakh until now.
As mentioned earlier, we have an order book of INR 1.2 Crore in place with back-to-back travels and their advance already in our bank.
MonetizationWe are raising an angel round of INR 3 Crore from strategic and marquee investors and would be closing that round by 2nd week of June. We have a revenue share with each campsite owner. As of now we average an 18% rev share and that would increase with the amount of business we do with each campsite.
Marketing PlansWe have a unique product in hand where word of mouth speak for itself. We have noticed that every person that travels to our campsite would post umpteen number of updated on various social media handles and that would initiate a lot of digital discussion about the trip and our brand.
Apart from that we will resort primarily to online marketing and look to reach out to avid travelers just like myself.
Market size and market opportunityThere are 750 campsites in India. Our research indicates that the adventure travel market size is around 1000 Crores and increasing 200% YoY.
Market opportunity is huge; multiple researches done by Amazon and the likes have shown that employee productivity increases by around 200% immediately after a corporate offsite at a campsite.
Result of this is that we have a bundle of corporates approaching us daily to plan their next corporate offsite. In the last 1 week we have 40 corporates that have enquired with us.
We have a lot of demands that come from fellow start ups and SMEs and with this number growing, we are certain we will be running out of camps soon.
BW Reporters
This is Meghna Shukla. She lives in Delhi. She is an engineering graduate and currently pursuing MBA from Jaypee Business School. She has a work experience of 2 years in content development. She loves to read and write.
