Desicow.com blog

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).

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 But anything that show your product or service out of date changes.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.

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