Passion pops up portal and now it pays

Mar 17, 2010

Ramu R. Kallepalli, who has had a fad for travel and wished to open a travel business of his own, is now living his dream. As someone who thinks differently,, he does not prefer doing things in a routine way and become another run-of-the-mill player in business. And true to his wont, his web portal positions itself as one which promotes red hot travel ideas.

Mr. Kallepalli who launched his portal www.travelspice.com, showcased it in the recent software show organised by ITsAP here.

What is the USP of travelspice.com? How are you positioning yourself?

We offer off-beat vacations like wildlife safari, pilgrimages and eco-tourism spots to all domestic and international destinations. As an end-to-end travel products company our collaboration extends to hotels, airlines and booking buses.

More than 4,000 hotels are listed with our portal, but won't let even others out if customers seek our services. We also help our customers get visas and passports and develop a strong customer relationship, which we leverage to sell all our products. The website is meant to be an interface between the customer and the suppliers of all travel services. We also sell our products offline.

What is your revenue generation model?
We first identify properties with potential and market them to customers and take a margin from them. There are excellent properties on the Tungabhadra, and eco-tourist resorts in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Gujarat, which pay us up to 25 per cent as commission, as they are unable to get customers on their own.

One can also book airlines tickets on our site, but we get less from them as airlines don’t rely on us heavily. We also advertise properties like Chitvan in Kanha National Park in Madhya Pradesh on our site. But when a person clicks for information on it, he is directed to book the property within the portal.

How do you plan to further popularize your website?
We are into SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing) to promote our website. We had advertisements on 120 buses of APSRTC and Prasad’s Imax. We identify and look for mediums which don’t see advertisements as their principal source of revenue but have a niche customer base to promote ourselves. We are also collaborating with all airlines.

Has your company achieved break even? Are you posting profits?
We started as a travel agency, built a dedicated customer base and then started the portal only last week. Having started in 2007, we have been accredited by both IATA (International Air Transport Association) and TAAI (Travel Agents Association of India) and earn Rs 40 lakh per month right now and hope to increase it to Rs one crore by the end of the year.

Tell us about the investment that went into the business?
I have personally invested one million dollars into it. Five angel investors have funded us with Rs 20 lakh. We are inviting people with experience and are ready to offer them sweat equity to head our various divisions.

Apart from the customer relationship, we outsource all our other activities like our HR, technical development of our site and take IP for all such developments to ourselves.

Tell us about yourself?
I have a master’s degree from the US and did my MBA from one of the best business schools in Chicago. I had headed the performance architecture group for Oracle in Chicago. Then ran an IT consulting company there and was earning two million dollars per annum, after which I shifted to India and started this which has long been in my mind.

I will be moderating a panel discussion on travel, tourism, hospitality entrepreneurship summit on March 26 in the city.