bACKpACK fUN

1.Executive Summary1.1 The Situation:

Travelling is a very common interest amongst the masses. Though it is one of the best way for recreation, it has been seen that people often fail to make travel plans due to several reasons such as:

Travel cost is very high and the major part of that expenditure is transportation(flight/train/cabs) and Hotel.

Lack of like minded travel companions

For solo travellers, sense of insecurity to explore new strange places without any guidance.

Lack of information to make a perfect tour plan.

Not only these, several problems are faced while one is travelling like:

Being scammed when you are travelling. You booked a hostel and when you arrived, the place doesn't look like to the picture.

Difficulty in deciding the tourist spots to visit, food joints to try, places to enjoy based on your budget.

Lack of knowledge about local laws, culture, language, routes etc.

1.Executive Summary1.2 Available aides

For the discussed problems, there are many business helping in bits of the whole puzzle. Like there are many apps that claim to give you the best deals on flights and hotels, you have cab services for local transportation(though every place has its own best), then we have apps to suggest restaurants, apps that provide routes, apps that help in translation, apps that serve as guides, social apps …. ∞

1.Executive Summary1.3 How can bACKpACKfUN help?

bACKpACKfUN provides a single platform to find like minded, travel companions, trip planning, finding best deals and making reservations by partnering with the best in the businesses and providing the user a convenient end to end experience at a single place.

2. Situation Analysis2.1 Company overview

The initial goal of the company is to create a platform for individuals or group of travellers to find travel companions wishing to visit the same destination. Then help them to plan the tour based on time, budget and interests and then help them getting the best deals on flights and restaurants. This doesn’t end here, once the app has created good user base, the company also aims to aid the traveller during the tour in all possible ways. bACKpACKfUN is based on two main pillars:

● Getting a better understanding of user’s interests by analysing their social media accounts like facebook & g+ which helps in finding like minded companions.

● Cost of flights and hotels for an individual or couple is costly. But with a big enough group, the company can get compensation with flight and hotel companies and collaborate with other tour planning companies to get the best deals for users.

2. Situation Analysis2.1 Market overview

● Digital travel sales is a $450 billion market worldwide (2014 figures by eMarketer). By 2017, 30% of travel sales in the United States will be generated through a mobile device (Statista). Today already, 47% of travelers start planning a trip on a smartphone. This is a perfect opportunity for a travel app like bACKpACKfUN that provides all at one station service to the user planning a trip. With growing app dependency of smartphone users and huge travel industry, the market if more than ready for bACKpACKfUN.

● Like any other business, competition for the company is already present but in bits and pieces, none of them poses a direct threat. The primary use case: “finding travel companions” have been attempted to be solved by few before but nothing prominent. Most popular app in this sphere is “Trip Buddy” which has only 10K downloads and no presence in India.The secondary use case: “planning and reservations”; Apps like Trip Planner 100K downloads and 4.2 rating has initiated a good effort in helping travellers to plan their itinerary while for getting best deals on flights and hotels there are huge giants like MakeMyTrip(100M) and OYO Rooms(1M). Since these giants solve a piece of the puzzle, instead of competing with them, we plan to collaborate with them and utilise their already captured market and infrastructure. While we encourage users meeting travel companions and planning their trip using bACKpACKfUN to use MakeMyTrip and OYO for their travel and hotel reservations providing them users, we can utilise their infrastructures and partnerships to improve our user experience. Thus reducing competition with collaboration.

2. Situation Analysis2.3 Target Customers

Though bACKpACKfUN serves every user planning a trip but it’s travelling companion finding platform will be very handy in following cases:

Adventure tourists: Users up for an adventure trip like trekking, mountaineering, scuba diving, etc can find companions using the app since you need company during adventurous sport and not many people in your family and friends may be up for it.

Pilgrimage tourists: Religious travel is a huge part of local tourism in a country like India. Major tourists in this category lie in the age group of 40-60 years and always prefer to travel in groups. A planned trip to their desired religious place will be very handy.

Female travellers: Which woman doesn’t want to take a break from the hectic life and go away from their responsibilities, meet new people, make new friends but the major concern is security. bACKpACKfUN can bring all such women of a city together and plan an all girls trip for them. Not only they will feel more secure together, after the trip they will have more friends in the city.

Backpackers: Low Budget Travel enthusiasts who when grouped together with our app can bear the total cost more easily by enjoying the best deals provided and sharing the resources(eg: hotel rooms,cabs, etc) throughout the trip.

3. GoalThe main goal of the company is to grow its user base as vast as it can and make it popular among masses. Since the use case of

the app is not of everyday purpose, it requires good amount of publicity and attractive deals to compete in the market and grow popularity Thus money making will not be the main goal in the early days and company’s commission will be bare minimum in order to provide our services at the lowest price possible. The initial goal will be to increase number of app downloads and achieve good rating and reviews by users.

Considering that the app is required only in case of travel we aim at achieving 100 Downloads in the first year with a user rating above 4.

4. Strategy4.1 Target Market: The Customers

The app provides following services to the customer:

A social platform where they can find like minded individuals and group of people planning to travel to the same(like Goa, Mauritius) or similar(like beach, hill station) destination.

A trip planner which based on their destination, interests, number of travel days and budget suggests optimum itinerary and gives detailed information of destination’s tourist spots, culture, laws, etc.

A reservation platform where after planning the trip they can search for available flights and hotels and make reservations.

These services can be useful for anyone planning a trip to a tourist destination and wish to travel in a group which not only provides security and shares the economic burden but also helps you meet new people and make more friends.

4. Strategy4.1 Target Market: Collaborators

bACKpACKfUN aims at providing end to end travel aides to its user resulting in many services for which it needs many collaborators.

1. Transport providers: To provide transport facilities like Cab, Bus, Flight, Train, etc within the app at lower prices, the company needs to make several collaborations with reliable transport companies across the world.

2. Accommodation providers: For providing a pleasant stay to customers during their trip, the company aims to collaborate with several hotels/Motels/hostels across the world.

3. Other companies: Along with this bACKpACKfUN aims to collaborate with other transport and accommodation booking companies like OYO Rooms, MakeMyTrip, Goibibo, etc to utilise their established infrastructure, collaborations and resources. Also such collaborations will also be useful in app’s advertisements as these companies already have an existing userbase.

Since transport and accommodation are the most costly and important part of user’s trip. bACKpACKfUN aims to collaborate with the best in business service providers to give the most reliable and efficient services at the lowest prices.

4. Strategy4.1 Target Market: Competitors

The primary use case “finding travel companions” : This has been attempted to be solved by few before but nothing prominent. Most popular app in this sphere is “Trip Buddy” which has only 10K downloads and no presence in India.

The secondary use case “Trip planning”: Apps like Trip Planner has gained initial popularity over the years with 100K downloads. The app has an overall satisfactory user review and a 4.2 rating on Google playstore but without any collaboration or sufficient advertisement hasn’t created any buzz.

The final use case “Reservations”: It is a very popular and common use case and many companies like MakeMyTrip, Goibibo, OYO, Trivago helps you in selecting your transport and hotel. So instead of competing directly with them, bACKpACKfUN aims more at collaborating with them.

So there is competition present in bits and pieces but there is no direct competitor that aims at solving the entire travel use case at one place.

4. Strategy4.2 Value Proposition: Customer value

bACKpACKfUN is an entirely customer oriented app which ensures to provide its services to customers in the most reliable and efficient way at the lowest price possible. For this we aim at:

Ensuring that all our users are reliable by validating email accounts and phone number. Since it is a social platform, users must be able to trust their fellow travellers.

Providing an end to end travel planning platform never offered before with all the services required for travelling at one place.

Grouping people together and then utilising the bulk order to get the required services at the lowest price to our users.

4. Strategy4.2 Value Proposition: Collaborator value

The primary use of bACKpACKfUN is to allow like minded travellers to meet each other, thus we have the data of people willing to travel along with their desired destination and contact information. This data is very useful for our collaborators which are mainly transport and accommodation providers to publish their ads through mails or sms.

When our users make reservations, they are not an individual or couple but a big group so our collaborators get huge amount of order in one go which is obviously very useful for them.

Most of all, since moneymaking is not the company’s highest priority, our commision is sufficiently low to keep the prices lower for our users and not significantly affecting the profits of our collaborators.

4. Strategy4.2 Value Proposition: Company value

bACKpACKfUN aims at creating a big customer base in a use case not significantly solved before and creating a monopoly with time. We do this by providing our services at the most reliable, convenient and economic way and gain customer’s trust. We plan to achieve popularity among desired users by collaborating with the popular companies in the sister use cases.

Since our users are in groups, small incentives in each transactions will add up to significant profit for the company.

Once we achieve popular user base, the company aims at adding premium(paid) services in the app like translation, selecting nearby food joints, audio guides, etc at a nominal price.

5. Tactics5.1 Product

Basic Use Case: The product is an android app that helps in creating a single platform where user can find like minded travel companion. Plan their trip and make travel reservations.

Attributes:

Reliability: Ensured by validating every user through several means

Usability: Achieved by keeping the user interface simple, modular, readable and useful

Economic: The app gathers people together to the same destination and bargains with the service providers for lower prices based on the bulk ordering.

5. Tactics5.2 Service

A social platform to meet and chat like minded travel companions.

A trip planner that provides you detailed information of the places you are planning to visit and suggests optimum travel plan based on your interests, tenure of stay and budget

A booking platform to make your transport and accommodation booking at lower prices along with attractive deals.

5. Tactics5.3 Brand

Name: bACKpACKfUN

Logo/ Symbol:

Slogan: “Let’s Travel Together!”

Jingle: “Just pack your bags and leave back tension …… Let’s travel together with bACKpACKfUN”

App idea is inspired by backpackers who travel across the world with limited luggage and low expenditure to experience different cultures and know more people. Thus the name bACKpACKfUN. Our logo is a popular character CampMaster Strauch from the movie Up in which he travels together with a stranger across the world and always had his backpack with him. So both the name and logo is very symbolic of our app.

5. Tactics5.4 Price

The primary services of meeting travel companions and trip planning are offered for free.

When the user makes bookings from within the app, the app charges nothing from the user but charges a small share of profit from the service provider.

Once the app gains popularity and the user base is large enough, we aim at launching premium(paid) services that may be useful for the user such as suggesting food joints nearby, helping in translation and communication, managing travel pictures, etc.

5. Tactics5.5 Incentive

We plan to attract customers by promising deals such as compensations for first time user in travel bookings, giving referral point for suggesting app to friends, giving loyalty points to our users, giving discounts during travel seasons etc.

We also plan to offer incentives to our collaborators like reducing commission if the service provider provides offer for reaching it through our app or giving incentives based on the user rating of the services, etc.

We will also gift our employees with bonuses based on their contribution in bringing more collaborators with us(like hotels) and from user/collaborator feedback along with sponsored vacation with office team once a year to keep them motivated and encouraged.

5. Tactics5.6 Communication

The main source for conveying about our product and services to our customers is advertisement. Since our product is an app, we plan to target the tech-savvy customer by advertisements on travel blogs, websites and social media campaigns like facebook, youtube, instagram, etc.

We will also target the customer base of our collaborators by advertising on their websites and apps and providing huge discounts if they reach our collaborators from our app.

5. Tactics5.7 Distribution

The main source of distribution for bACKpACKfUN will be through different App stores on several platforms like android, apple, windows, linux, etc. The target app stores are:

Google Play – Google’s official Android app store, which features over 500,000 apps, as well as music and video streaming services.

App Store – Apple’s official iOS application store and is still thought to be the biggest app store available across all smartphone platforms, though Android is catching-up fast.

Amazon Appstore – Amazon’s app store has been remarkable popular since the company launched its Kindle Fire tablet device. Currently boasts over 30,000 apps, and claims a higher paid app download rate than Google Play.

6. Implementation6.1 Infrastructure

Global Headquarter The company headquarter that handles global stakeholder and collaborators, manages lowel levels and plans further developments. This is managed by the CEO.

Country Headquarters

Tier 1 Office

Tier 2 Office

Company offices that will be present in the most important cities of the country based on country’s size and tourism. This will handle popular collaborators in that country eg. flight company, hotel chain, cab service and will be managed by a Country Chairman.

Offices at the important and popular tourist places which will handle the local collaborators like hotels, cab services, etc. and will be managed by branch managers.

Offices in cities which see low or seasonal tourist flows to aid our customers and handle small local collaborators.

6. Implementation6.3 Schedule

App Development:

Initial version with mock flows to demonstrate for our collaborators: 1st Quarter.

Final App with server integration and polished UI: 3rd Quarter.

Collaborators Onboarding: End of 3rd Quarter.

App Launch:

Initial launch(in one country’s most popular tourist places): End of 1st year.

Global Launch: Three months after initial launch.

6. Implementation

6.2 ProcessesSearch Travel

Companions

Analyses user

interests.

Introduces like minded

users.

Users finalizes their

groups of travellers

Suggest trip plan and itinerary

Users Ready to

make bookings

Make Transport

Reservation

Make Accommodation

Reservations

Provide local cab services

Yes

No

DISCLAIMER