Desicow.com blog

Last blog we wrote about the Star Alliance Frequent Flyer of the month. This month we introduce you to the Frequent Flyer Program of Emirates.

In the past quarter or so Emirates has started service from major airports in US to the most of the big cities in India, if it did not have one already existing. So as traveller to India, you are more likely to choose Emirates over other airlines, given that this airline gives good deals on air tickets to India.

Emirates Frequent Flyer program is called SkyWards. Its got 3 tiers, starts with Blue, then as you accumulate miles you upgrade to Silver, and subsequently to the Gold Tier. The Skywards miles can be redeemed not only for Emirates Flights, but also partner airlines of Emirates like

- Continental Airlines,
- Japan Airlines,
- Kingfisher Airlines,
- Korean Air,
- South African Airways,
- United Airlines
- Virgin Blue.

A roundtrip flight from India to USA consists of 15,000 to 16,000 miles depending on starting and ending points, for a family of 2 adults and 1 or more children this can add up to around 40-50,000 miles. These miles can be used in India to fly local with Jet Airways or Kingfisher Airlines, or you can redeem these when you come back to US, while flying with Continental / United. So next time plan to buy tickets to India,  don’t forget to ask your travel agent about getting yourself enrolled in the Emirates SkyWards program.

In the days since you downloaded the DesiCow.com we have updated the US-India Travel kit, adding printable labels for your bags. Just print the label, write your name, address and phone numbers and stick them on to your bags. Happy Flying!!!

If a typical Desi family of 2 adults and 1 or more kids fly to India, every year, they accumulate a lot of miles. If you only spend a short time to learn about earning and consolidating frequent flyer (or buyer) miles, who knows you can earn atleast one ticket free every 2-3 year or so…

We will talk briefly about some Frequent Flyer programs… this time we start with Star Alliance. Star Alliance is the world’s first and largest airline alliance. It was founded in 1997, with 5 members; it has since grown to 21 participating airlines.

The advantage of flying through Star Alliance is that you can redeem miles that you accumulated from any Star Alliance member airline for any Star Alliance member flights. So you can redeem your Airline miles from say Singapore Airlines, in a flight operated by United Airlines, because both these airlines are part of Star Alliance.

Some of the participating airlines in Star Alliance are:

1. Singapore Airlines
2. United Airlines
3. US Airways
4. Air Canada
5. Lufthansa
6. Air India was scheduled to be a full member by mid-2009
7. Continental Airlines is scheduled to be a full member by September 2009

According to the Star Alliance Website, this is what you need to do to get your frequent flyer miles.

1. Quote your frequent flyer number every time you book with any Star Alliance member airline or travel provider. Your number appears on your membership card.
2. Show your membership card when you check in for any flight to ensure you earn your miles or points.
3. Save your passenger receipts and boarding passes. If your miles or points do not appear on your account, send your tickets and boarding passes to your frequent flyer programme service centre and have them credited to your account. Allow six to eight weeks from the date of request.

We will write more about Frequent Flyer Programs of airlines in subsequent newsletters… Till then… fly smart.

Best regards from The DesiCow.com Team.

I remember the warm summer days of Mumbai during May 2000 when one day my mother came up to me and asked if i wanted to see heaven on earth!! I was so surprised by that question. I then came to know that my parents were planning a trip to Jammu and Kashmir. The first thing that crawled my mind was the situation there due to increased terrorism and wars that were constantly taking place. But my parents were assured by their friends that its a safe place and can be visited as it has a very tight security for tourists. My parents had gone for their honeymoon to Kashmir back in 1979 and they had promised each other to be back to the place with their kids. It was a perfect time to fulfill the promise made and we left for KASHMIR!!!

The first thing i noticed on Srinagar airport were ice covered mountains and beautiful pine trees. It made me go WOW and i was already in love with the place and the kind of climate. Srinagar is the capital city of Jammu & Kashmir. It is at an altitude of 1, 730 m.In the heart of the Kashmir valley, Srinagar spreads out on both sides of the Jhelum river. Srinagar offers the spectacular sights of the lovely lakes and the houseboats on them. The dry fruits and the traditional Kashmiri handicrafts are the other major attractions of the hill resort. Dal Lake, Nagin Lake, Mughal Gardens, Hazaratbal Mosque, Shankaracharya Hill, Hari Parbat Fort, Adi Shankaracharya Temple, River Jhelum, Hazratbal Shrine and Jama Masjid were the places we visited during our stay at Srinagar. We even stayed in one of the houseboats named Hollywood palace and what an amazing experience it was!! My parents reminisced the days of their honeymoon and told me the stories about their stay in 1979. They noticed that Srinagar had changed a lot in these many years but we all concluded that if there is a heaven on earth, it’s here, it’s here, it’s here in Srinagar!!

Travel Information:

• By Air: Civil airport Humhama is 15 km from the city centre. Flights connects Srinagar with Jammu, Delhi, and Leh.

• By Rail: The nearest rail head is Jammu Tawi.

• By Road: Srinagar is situated on National Highway-1A, which connects to all parts of the country. Buses of Jammu & Kashmir Road State Road Transport Corporation (J&KSRTC) and STRCs of Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Himachal Pradesh run to Jammu from major northern cities like Delhi, Chandigarh and Amritsar. Some continue to Srinagar, while there are many connections from Jammu.

Best time to visit: Between May and September.

couple of websites which have contact details of India Travel Agents [Desi Travel agents] in USA.

http://www.thingsindian.com/travela.htm

http://www.nyindia.us/travel-agents.html

http://www.thedesicentral.com/travelagents.htm

http://www.udeps.com/travel_agents.html

If you guys know of any more websites please let me know, I will be glad to add it to list.

Also do not forget to try DesiCow.com . DesiCow.com is a new website that connects you with Travel Agents. You submit your trip details and Travel Agents submit quote.

There are lot of people who search internet to find Travel Agents for India. I found couple of such websites through search engine and then randomly called to some of the agents. Unfortunately I came across lot of numbers invalid.

I asked my friends “If you were to search Indian Travel agents on internet, how would you you do?”

Most of them gave common answer which was like
:- search for “Indian Travel agent” or “Desi Travel Agent” using search engine.
:- give call to couple of agents local to your area.

There are two not so cool things about such an approach.
1) all the contacts found on internet have no guaranty of their service level [these includes trust factor, customer support].
2) We have got in to habit of talking to Desi agents who are local. Its quite possible that an India Travel Agent from NJ might give good price for SFO - Mumbai ticket and similarly some California based Travel agent for India might give best price for JFK - Mumbai Air ticket.

In olden days we had Papaer tickets, so it was convenient to deal with local agents. May be visit him personally and pick up your ticket. However ever since E-Tickets have come in to practice it doesn’t really matter if you buy Air tickets to India from some non-local travel agent ( if he is giving good price).

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.

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

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.