Desicow.com blog

Although I run DesiCow.com, I am trying to share here unbiased ideas.

DesiAirTickets.com does something similar to what Desicow.com is in to. However there certain crucial differences between how desicow.com and DesiAirTickets.com works.

1) DesiAirTickets.com doesnt charge anything to travel agents; Desicow.com charges 10 cents every time Travel agents submits a quote.

2) DesiAirTickets.com shares your email, contact details with all agents who have registered with them;
Desicow.com shares contact details only if some agent offers to submit quote for your ticket.

3) Desiairtickets.com is full of sponsors banner and advertisement;
DesiCow.com is free of any advertisement.

4) Its very easy to register as spam travel agent with DesiAirTickets.com (I know one travel agent who uses DesiAirTickets.com just to gather emails & phone numbers of users); DesiCow.com at this point of time has comparatively lesser number of member travel agentsbut it has very high quality with respect to User privacy.

If I was buying ticket and had to use DesiAirTickets.com, I would simply create a dummy secondary email address for this purpose and would never give out my phone number.

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.

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.

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.