Dave McClure, Bloomberg Capital Travel had invested $1 m in Dec 2011
Mygola, a personalised online travel planning Web site, plans to go in for another round of funding in the next six to twelve months. The Web site, which has been co-founded by two IIT graduates, also plans to launch a mobile application so that users can ask questions on the go. However, the company officials did not disclose how much they are planning to raise.
In December 2011, the Web site received $1 million in seed funding from Dave McClure, Bloomberg Capital and other angel investors. “This funding will help us with our growth and expansion plans. We are planning to launch a mobile application which users can access through their smart phones,” said Mr Anshuman Bapna, Co-founder of Mygola.
Crowd sourcing
Mygola works on a travel planning model where it uses crowd sourcing to recruit “guides” from around the world to answer queries from users. These guides are travel-enthusiasts who are paid to answer queries on the Web site. Guides have to go through a specially designed training module after they are recruited.
“We have 1,500 guides at present and plan to increase this number to 10,000 by the end of 2012. Most of our guides are from India and we plan to include more guides from around the world,” said Mr Bapna. Mygola has a core research team of 18 people who sort all the travel questions that they receive. These are then directed to the guides who look for the best suited answers.
Pay-as-you-wish
This pay-as-you-wish model seems to have worked both for the travel planner, the guides as well as registered users. Users can pay any amount for a question; this will unlock the next question. Users can optionally pay $30 for any number of questions for one trip, or pay $99 for any number of trips in the whole year.
Many guides use this platform as a part-time revenue generating profession. “We have an attrition rate of 20 per cent (for guides). Our core research team has been with us from the beginning,” said Mr Bapna.
When Mygola was launched in 2009, it was only an online travel planning Web site, but now user demands have made them extend their services.
“Initially we only planned trips, now users want us to book the trip too. Over the last two months we have also started bookings service,” said Mr Bapna. The Bangalore-based start-up may look at introducing advertising on their Web site as an additional revenue generating tool.
priya.s@thehindu.co.in