While flying within India. I have personally experienced low standard as far Customer support is concern. However this video shows that even the flight safety level in India is not up to best world standard. Its funny and scary how these maintenance people use some kind of duct tape to fix a wing of an commercial plane, which is about to go for a flight.
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).
Actually we don’t charge fortune, we charge Travel company small fee of 10 cent every time a travel agent submits a quote.
What are benefits of this?
Quality of data.
we are looking for quality data. Although at this point of time I just have two travel agents on board [I am intentionally delaying more agents to come on board, I will talk about this in some other post], but eventually we will have couple of agents from several regions in USA. These agents would be reliable people to deal with, one who gives good price for your tickets.
Works for everyone
People who are submiting Trip requests to gather quotes their contact details are only shared with Travel agents who are interested in selling that ticket.
Branding of Travel Agency
Staying active on website by submitting quotes for trip requests helps you get in touch with person who is looking to buy tickets, at the same time brings you in front of people [ and search engine, these
features are yet to come on website (Heard of SEO services charging 100s of dollars for optimizing your company website to perform better on internet? Desicow is soon going to make your life is easy in that
aspect)]
Advertisement sucks!
I am an engineer. Ask me to write a complex program, I will be more then happy to take a cup of coffee and get to work on my laptop. I love my job. Who the hell wants to call travel agents and ask them to get on board on some new website? Wait a minute I have got one easier option, let me register on google adsense and start flashing those advertisements on my website. I have done this in past and it has paid very well. However I don’t want to show advertisements this time for one important reason. The usual principle is get lot of users by attracting to your website, show them add, make users click on some of the ads, make money. So you put efforts in bringing users and then try to change their focus from your product (website) to all 1000s of ads [including ads of how to improve your sex life, loose 10 pounds and win ipod since you were luckiest 100000th visitor]. No advertisements.
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.
This is something that happened a couple of years ago when I was fresh from India. I’m sure many of you may have had similar experiences. (Of course my tickets, paid for by my employer, were purchased from Desi Travel Agents, though it is a less known fact that travel agents get you the best of deals on air tickets).
Having recently opened an account with Bank of America, I had to go over to the bank, which was across the street to inquire about something. My office was on the outskirts of the city, so ample space available for parking, courtyard, small lakes, beautiful trees, wild birds, lawn…..
So here I was at a the edge of a road junction, admiring the lawn, the trees and the birds, the beautiful pond, and the sunny weather. Suddenly I realized that a big SUV has stopped about 20 feet away from me while I was looking the other way. The lady driving the now stationary car moved her hand suggesting that I cross the road. And for a split second I was amazed….. too amazed to understand what was happening. I swiftly took control of the situation, realizing that she assumed that I was standing there to cross, with a motion of my hand I conveyed that I’m not going to cross, and took small steps in the direction I wanted to actually go (along the road) with a smile which I hope, conveyed a THANK-YOU. The car then left…. but I couldn’t take the smile off my face. WOW !!! I was left to myself with a big sensation of WOW. People actually wait for pedestrians to cross first, and then drive away. Though now I take it for granted that they will stop. 
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 …..