ScoutMyTrip Aims to Be the Platform of Choice for Road Travelers
Started in December 2016, ScoutMyTrip was founded by two Mumbai-based avid travelers -- Deepak Ananth (39) and Vineet Rajan (32), who met know each other through their love for going on rides on their Royal Enfield bikes and cars traversing the country. Deepak has been a specialist with expertise in the payment space earlier while Vineet has co-founded Indieblogger - India’s largest and most active social network for Indian Bloggers.
“We love travelling,” says Deepak, co-founder and CEO. The reason for founding ScoutMyTrip came out of their passion. ScoutMyTrip is basically an information portal that makes travel easy and accessible for anyone. It is essentially a road-trip planning site that allows users to create an itinerary for their road trips. Users can choose where to stay and eat, and what routes to follow. It also allows users to share their road trip plans and experiences. The tips such as road condition, halts, petrol pumps and public restrooms on the route is a handy guide. Around 12000 places of interest have been curated and shared on the site.
The site is free for use for consumers and the company’s revenue streams include affiliate income from stays, car rentals, tour operators and roadside assistance. Besides, it also earns from brand campaigns and customised road-travel planning for corporates and individuals. ScoutMyTrip.com has already tied up with Oyo Rooms & Kotak Bank for multiple brand campaigns.
Since December 2016 – which is when the website comes through from its beta phase- has completed over 1000 trips and has also raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from the co-working space and accelerator Z Nation Lab. The startup is looking at 1 lakh users in the next 6 months and 1 million users in 18 months. An app strategy and looking at going international is definitely on the cards too.
The Ministry of Tourism in India pegs travel at $136.3 billion (excluding air ticketing). ScoutMyTrip pegs the road travel pie at $8 billion per year out of this sum. Also last year, Holiday IQ.com’s survey showed that 73% travelers take more than 4 vacations a year and 60% of all vacations are road trips.
