Gaurav Kumar, Cabyatra - Search, Compare Prices & Book Cabs Online

We at YourStory.in recently caught up with entrepreneur & founder of Cabyatra.com, Gaurav Kumar, to know more about his startup. Please find the edited excerpts below:

Tell us about Cabyatra.

Cabyatra.com is a cab booking portal that provides simple and exciting features to search, compare and book different types of cabs of multiple operators at one place with all controls to select and book the cab of choice online. Cabyatra.com offers various parameters to compare cabs before booking like fare, no. of seats, AC/Non AC, operator rating etc.

Why was Cabyatra started? What is the story behind Cabyatra?

The idea of bringing the cab searching and booking system online struck me during my b-school days. There was a taxi stand very near to my school. There were 50-60 cabs under local taxi union parked there. There were 5-6 private taxi operators also nearby. I always noticed that customers either walked in for enquiring cab availability for desired journey where in the attending coordinator would juggle through day bookings and then inform availability status and fare etc. And then the negotiation would start. Also they would distribute business cards in the locality and customers would make calls to multiple operators to enquire or negotiate for cabs. That's when I thought of the possibility of providing people the convenience of searching and booking a cab over the internet. The idea had two value offerings – it ensures that increasingly growing internet users can easily search and book a cab at the comfort of home, and also helps them give variety and transparency of choosing among multiple vendors, car types etc. where in if the system(back-end) knows each vendor’s inventory, customer can always get confirmed cab instantaneously.

I was student head of Entrepreneurship Cell. I started working on the business plan and got in touch with cab operators, prospective customers, my faculty and some entrepreneurs to understand the nitty-gritty of entrepreneurship and the feasibility of the idea as well. Almost 6 months after completing my MBA, I got in touch with my close friend Noorul in New Delhi. In the process of taking our idea to the execution level, we also met Mr. Gurcharan Singh, a trusted name in Delhi Taxi industry and we partnered to start Cabyatra.com. There has been an immense amount of ground work involved since then. It has required a lot of effort and money to materialize the concept and put it to operations.

Where are you based? When was this started? How big is your team? Are you looking at hiring?

We are based out of New Delhi currently. Cabyatra.com was founded on April 4th, 2011.We are a team of 3 founders right now. We are looking ahead to expand to other metro cities and hence we will certainly need more manpower to handle the business. Possible areas of openings with us would be customer care executives, operations manager etc.

How many customers do you have per day?

We handle around 10-15 serious customers on an average each day, mostly from Delhi NCR region. We are rolling out an aggressive marketing campaign soon.

How did you acquire your first few customers? 

We started with Google adwords as first mode of advertisement, online. It has really paid off by connecting us to travel seekers over internet.

What are the challenges you face in terms of the logistics?

There isn’t much standardization of cabs in the industry. Much of the control of selecting a particular cab from garage and sending it over is in hands of the vendor. Hence there have been cases of customer not fully being satisfied with the quality of cabs sent. We have tried to overcome these challenges, for example if a particular cab type is unavailable, we ensure the vendor sends a similar or even a better car to customer. There was an instance when we had to send a SX4 for a trip instead of Indigo as the Indigo had developed some technical snag just before the booking start time. Our prime focus is always on our customers, quality and service, and we strive hard to keep our customers happy every time they do business with us.

How did you fundraise to startup?

The initial startup capital has come from our own savings.

Are you looking at fundraising?

Yes, we are. Currently, we are closely analyzing our day to day operations, customers, vendors and refining our business model while we continue to operate in Delhi NCR. Our model and system is very scalable and sustainable. We are targeting to expand to other metro cities within the next 6 months time-frame and we will need funding for our marketing activities(online and offline) as well as for running customer care and operations.

Anything else that you want to share with the readers of YourStory.in?

People generally know that there are great holiday packages including flight charges, hotels, meals etc. I would like to share that in Delhi NCR, not many know that there are so many exciting package tours comprising of travel by a cab, and of course hotel stay and meals. It would be great to see people coming to cabyatra.com and booking holiday packages online like ‘2 nights and 3 days Delhi to Shimla-Manali tour’ where in one could select the car type and add it to a ‘shopping cart’. I think that has been only done in case of flights till now, cabs would be new space! We shall soon launch this feature!

Please check out their website for more details http://www.cabyatra.com