Desicow.com blog

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.

I am starting a website where Travel Agents will be able to get in touch with potential customers who are shopping for air tickets to India. Of course tickets need to cheapest and should beat all other prices.

Mr. X runs a travel agency, selling tickets to India. Business is doing all good.

One fine day he comes across a website which claims to solve an important issue in same business and also claims that website will give boost to Mr X’s business.

For some reason Mr. X decides to give this website a shot, so that he is not left behind in competition. Within minutes Mr. X realizes that website does solve problem if it is able to attract users who are shopping out for Air tickets to India. He also finds that website is not free. There is a small fees involved in using website to get business out of it.

Is it wrong to ask your first few customers(Travel Agencies in my case) to pay for using website?

Almost all of my friend said ‘YES’. Everyone said - “make it FREE for first few Agencies”

I can guess some of the reason they are thinking:
1) Travel agencies will avoid using website because of fees involved.
2) no one wants to pay money to a new website.
3) You will get more travel agents on board if you make it free
4) Its always easy to start asking for fees once website gets bit old and popular.

However I have some different thoughts in my mind.

1) A business owner doesn’t care about some small amount of money, if in return, website is really helping his business. In fact he will surely avoid wasting time on some website which doesn’t help him(even if it FREE).

2) As business owner instead of spending small amount he is more concern about how he can get more out of this website, promote his business and sell more tickets.

3) Desicow.com is actually bringing a travel agent closer to potential ticket buyer; its way better then wasting money on other websites for advertisement.

Desicow.com is going to give Travel agents 100s of ticket leads over a period of time. Travel Agents will get access to these leads from all across USA.

I want these travel agencies to push me to add more tools and features to website. I want them to make me go crazy fixing any issues and get more potential ticket buyers. This kind of coomunication will only come in to picture if these travel agencies have paid for using website. They are serious about business and now they have paid to use desicow.com , so desicow.com better be a sincere website.

Hi there!
This is the first blog entry from the official blog of DesiCow.com website.

What is DesiCow.com ?
- its a simple website to help you buy cheapest air tickets to India.
- its not a world-changing website but it solves one simple problem which all Indians face when they are shopping for cheap air tickets to India.

Website is still in stealth mode and I am planning to launch beta version within next 10 days. Please keep watching this space to know more about desicow.com website and team.