Desicow.com blog

Marketing lessons from James bond

Lesson 1: Re - inventing product
James bond movies are always up to date. Every movie is in present time. However all james bond movie have some elements Hot chicks, action, danger, gadgets.

Entrepreneur should remember when reinventing the product or service.  Service quality, touch, quick response should remain same. But anything that show your product or service out of date changes.

Desicow.com will keep evolving as per people’s suggestion & need as time passes. But our commitment towards honest community efforts will remain same.

Lesson 2: Communicate well

If you can’t connect with your audience, no matter how much you talk, they’ll never hear you. Bond always talks common man’s language.

Desicow.com always will stay simple and easy to identify. If we are doing 10 things, we want to do 7 things which everyone does regularly and may be invent 3 new things and invite users to review it. We have feedback form and we keep receiving crucial feedback from Users who help us in driving this project. One thing we surely know is that we are moving towards a sucessful community project.

Desicow.com is not spending money in promoting website. We are trying to reach out people on social networks like orkut.com and relying heavily on word of mouth publicity. We are positive that desicow.com solves some small real world problem and it is worth trying and it is something I will use it personally when I am planning to buy Air Tickets to India. (This was one of the important criteria suggested by my mentor “Do some project only if you would use it personally”)

Is it difficult to reach wider audience ?
Yes! Its extremely difficult to reach out people. In today’s world we are bombarded with 1000s new products and services every day.  There is no way you can catch up with everything.

One thing we surely don’t want to do is “bump in to people”, what I mean by it is, we dont want to jump on people’s head and talk big about desicow. We want help from people like you to spread word. I want some of you to help me shape this project, send me any negative feedbacks you have or ideas you have to make this website popular.

Will we ever get huge traffic like some of the top 5 popular Desi websites ?
Not sure about that. May be not because we are not looking for 10,000 people to visit us everyday and most of them bounce back. We want those 1000s people who are planning to buy Air tickets to India in near future. We want those 1000s of people who like small community websites like Desicow.com, which are started by some ordinary guy as side project. We want those 1000s of people who like to refer their friends and family about some useful & purposeful services.

I am sure you have heard of B2B (business 2 business) and B2C (business 2 consumer) models. An entity/business provide service or product to other business or directly to consumers.

DesiCow.com project is based on B2B2C model.

Let me introduce yo uto different actors/elements in my project:

1) Travel Agents [Business]
Travel Agents beat all prices when it comes to buying Air tickets to India. They do excellent job as far as this business is concern. DesiCow.com aims to give additional business to Agents by helping them reach to wider pool of people from all over USA.

2) Community [consumer]
I am building a community (portal) where Indians (living in USA) take part in their shopping process (shopping of Air Tickets to India).

Hence Desicow.com serves Businesses[ Travel Agents] to sell tickets to buyers[consumers].
“B2B2C”

What does consumer get out of desicow.com project?
Desicow.com enables you to easily get quotes from several Agents[we just have 2 agents as member, but this list will grow with time]. And I am repeating it again “Ticket Agents beat all prices”.

What does Travel Agents get out of Desicow ?
If you are some travel agents heres my message for you “Desicow.com project is based on fact that you guys do excellent job in selling Air tickets and beat all price. Desicow.com user base is growing day by day. Everyday I see number of visitors growing. By becoming member of desicow.com you get more visibility amongst this community”.
Since my website is new I will be more then oblidged to make sure that early members[Agents] eventually get more priviledges on this website in future.

What do I get out of desicow.com ?
I am software engineer at heart with inclination towards entrepreneurship. I like to create new things, make difference, like to see that 1000s of people use my work and help me grow it. I am passionate about this porject and like I have doen in past I will desicow a big success.

In the flight to USA, they showed instructions on the in-flight video display about immigration and customs formailties. For most of the visas that are applicable to ppl from India, we need to fill form I-94. Tired & half asleep I watched the details in the flight video, not understanding much. Luckily for me, there was an experienced desi gentleman next to me who helped me to fill out the form. Though, I had to make 3 attempts before getting everything right on the form.

Soon we landed at Washington D.C (it was Dulles Airport IAD, I think), stood in line for the Immigration. I was still quite groggy, and sleepy from the flight. They told me to wait behind a yellow line, till the officer calls. Other ppl got calls from their respective officers, but unfortunately for me,  I stood there waiting for the officer to call. But he wouldn’t call !!!! Now what, my tired half asleep mind panicked. I stood there for what seemed like tens of minutes. After a long time, a security guard told me loudly (I’m sure he was angry), why are you waiting, go to the counter. “Arre but”, I thought, “its written on the board to not go till you are called.”

So then, I gathered some courage and started to go to the counter, certain that i’m going to be scolded by the immigration officer for coming to the counter without him calling me. Luckily for me, there was no shouting. I think that officer didn’t want to work that day, so he just didn’t call me.

Then came the usual verification of original docs, passport, & taking the I-94. Once all that was completed, the officer stamped the I-94 form with my immigration status. Gave me the rubber stamped Customs form, to be given at the customs declaration counter. Much relieved, I was like…..  America here I come …..

There are lot of advantage Travel agents will get out of Desicow.com

From my past experience I am positive that desicow.com will eventually become a popular brand and destination for amongst desi community for buying tickets.

I spoke to couple of Travel agents and found that they get business from
* local customers/buyers directed from classifieds etc
* referred by friend and family

Desicow.com will give you 100 of additional ticket leads from all over USA. There are many Travel agents who advertise on websites like sulekha, desi magazines etc . Desicow.com helps you to get in touch directly with ticket buyer.

Desicow.com will get more and more users through word of mouth, and organic growth on internet.

Travel agents who associates early with Desicow.com will get more privileges in near future.

DesiCow.com is a simple website which solves one real life problem.

I am from Mumbai living in USA and every year I make a visit to home. Every year while its time to buy Air ticket, I will start talking to my friends and find out about some travel agents they know of. I will make a list of 4 to 5 travel agents[from friend's referral, Indian magazines and online yellow pages].

Once I get quote from these agents, I go ahead and buy ticket from Agent who gives best price and sounds good in dealing.

DesiCow.com eventually make this process more streamlined.

* Users submit their trip details
* Travel agents submit quote they can offer
* User buys ticket from agents directly.

The advantage here is Travel agents all over nation[USA] will get access to you trip request. There are very good chances that you will find best price quote on desicow.com

desicow.com went live last night. I mailed link to all my friends asking them to give a try and send me all feedback[specially negative critics]. I will start promoting website in next few hours.

website is still not ready and looks like launch will get delayed by one more week. I am positive to launch website coming weekend. Its quite possible that project still has some of the incomplete features and lot of bugs. But I want to launch website and let user try it.

Linkedin.com founder once said in a talk that “if you are not embarrassed with your first launch of product then it means you have delayed it”

There are two thoughts of schools:

website should be perfect before launch:

1) if users find bugs on your website, they will reject it and never come back
2) if you cannot develop a bug free website you should be ashamed
3) it OK to delay and get more time to fix bugs

launch early

1) launch early beta version, get feedback, fix issues, relaunch.
2) many users like to see your website evolving. They like websites which are started by some ordinary guy as side project and keeps becoming more useful and robust everyday
3) users like to point out bugs and new feature requests and want to take part community effect

Alright the heading was just to create curiosity and make you read this blog entry

Desicow.com is not a silly website. Its a simple website which solves some real world problem. Its a average website for an average user. Nothing rocket-science about it. More details about desicow.com’s purpose will be disclosed after website is launched.

regarding name “Desicow.com”

Who the hell keeps name of a website “Desicow” ?

Who the hell wants to buy or sell tickets to India on a website named “Desicow” ?

Isn’t “Desicow” some carazy silly funky name ?

Yes! It is.

However here are good reasons for selecting this name:

1) If you are have spent time searching for a good domain name you will know that almost all sensible names in the world are already taken by some one.

2) DesiCow.com is easy to remember.

3) try conveying this website name to someone on Phone, I bet you dont need to spell it. Its easy to pronounce and understand and there is no confusion about spelling mistake.

4) think of www.Monster.com - what comes to your mind ? ..A job site, rite? Do you ever think of a real Chinese monster with a lion head and gusting fire from his mouth Nops! only thing that comes to your mind is JOBS. Same way Desicow.com will eventually become a brand name amongst Desi junta. Once they know about what website does, this name will just remind them about buying and selling air tickets to India.

5) for many users(first timers) silly funky name itself creates little curiosity.

If you go out and ask 10 Indians “What are different places/ways to buy Air tickets to India ?”. Some of the answers you will get :
* local Travel Agents
* websites like makemytrip, priceline, kayak etc

If you go out and ask 10 Indians “Who gives the cheapest?”
9 out of 10 will tell you that “Travel Agents”

There is no way you can beat price given by travel agents. If you have an impressions from those funky ads claiming $500 ticket to India, they are absolutely false claims. These are just marketing tricks to get you interested in those website. If you don’t agree with me go to these websites and ask them to give you that $500 ticket and believe me they will come up with 10 UN-doable conditions in your travel for buying that $500 ticket.

Travel Agents give best price.
(how they get cheapest ticket will be discussed in some other blog entry).

Before starting Desicow.com project I asked myself one question: Is Desicow.com something I will use personally when shopping for Air tickets to India? answer was ‘YES’.

I checked with 10 different people and they said they will use it too.

If it helps me, if it helps 10 other people in my network, I am sure it will help 100s of people like us.