Founded in November 2014 by Ronak Gupta and Abhishek Aggarwal, New Delhi based
Routofy is based upon the philosophy of providing users with a visionary and seamless travel experience.
Routofy initially started off as a route-planning portal that allows users to know ‘how to reach’ any destination across India using a combination of flights, trains, buses & cabs. After realizing that making multiple bookings on a mobile is even more painful and time-consuming, Ronak & Abhishek decided to work on a mobile application & launched its Android app in January 2016.
The platform shows complete travel info for going from any Point A to Point B, be it flight prices, train availability, bus schedules or cabs options, in one search. Users can make door-to-door bookings for their entire travel itinerary by combining all these modes i.e. Book tickets from A colony in Mumbai to B Nagar in Agra. Right from your door to the door of your destination.
The startup accompanies travellers on their journey through its unique travel assistance, which includes facilities such as last-minute cab bookings, web check-in, transport delay information, and so on.
GenesisRonak Gupta, the co-founder & CEO of Routofy, spent a semester in France under IIT Delhi’s semester exchange programme during his graduation. All enthused to travel across Europe, he faced his first roadblock trying to figure out a suitable way to reach his desired destinations. Coordinating different modes, while keeping price and duration into consideration was a brain wracking experience. Opening multiple tabs for flight, train, bus schedules and prices, he found that direct options were often not available and he would look for alternate routes to the destination. The problem assumes complex proportions here in India, as the system is fraught with offline activity, delays, etc. This inspired him to start Routofy, where people could find routes to reach any destination and make compare-book all modes under the same umbrella, reducing the time for travel-planning multifold.
Special Key Features
Some key features of its product are:• Multi-modal (combine, compare, book): Realistic combinations of flights, trains, buses and cabs to provide the best way of reaching any destination
• Point-to-point Connectivity: It provide door-to-door bookings, instead of the conventional city-to-city transport.
• Express Single Checkout: One transaction & the entire itinerary gets booked.
• Connectivity to Remotest Locations: If it is on Google Maps, Rutofy can take you there.
• Travel Assistance: It accompany you on your journey last-minute cab bookings, web check-in, transport delay information, trip reminders, and so on.
Differentiation Factors The current players in the market follow the tried-and-tested model of having separate tabs for different modes, where the user is left to coordinate and make separate bookings for each of these. Users need to skim through thousands of available choices to pick the one most suitable for them. The startup filter the exhaustive list of choices, apply intelligence to it and present an assortment that is most relevant to the customers' needs. Its features of allowing multi-modal bookings in one shot, providing door-to-door connectivity and travel assistance offer a very different travel-planning & booking experience to users.
FundingRoutofy raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Snapdeal’s founders, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal in 2015. It is gearing up for a Series A round of funding in the coming months.
MonetizationRoutofy’s major revenue streams include commissions from vendors on-board and convenience fee for booking coordinated itineraries in one shot and door-to-door travel. Also, the company is looking into alternative streams based on personal recommendations. For example, think about getting your preferred meal delivered to your seat during your flight.
Traction DetailsSince its app was launched in late January 2016, Routofy has been steadily growing its user base and transactions. Within this month, it already closed bookings worth more than INR 1.5 million. The app’s downloads are also climbing up from the current number of 4k and the company is aiming to reach 50k by the end of this quarter.
Market Size & OpportunityThe eCommerce market is likely to touch $38 billion mark by the end of 2016, as reported by ASSOCHAM. With over a dozen sectors associated to travel industry, almost 70% of this eCommerce is comprised of travel-related transactions. Furthermore, corporate travel is a $25 billion industry in India. The present players in the industry have been operating on the conventional city-to-city search model & separate bookings for each mode for more than a decade now. Comparing different modes’ prices, time slots, duration etc. and making multiple bookings on a mobile is even more painful and time-consuming. With India crossing the milestone of 1 billion mobile subscribers recently, Routofy is here to disrupt the mobile travel industry and cater to the needs of this large customer base.
