[WebSparks] Six months on, Traverik reports steady growth

WebSparks, the four- month long campaign with Qualcomm ventures, announced its winners for the month of February. And Traverik, the online itinerary planner, was adjudged the winner! We had initially covered the startup, when it was in a private beta stage and since then the company has grown significantly. We caught up with Founder, Ashutosh Pandey again to know more about his journey with Traverik.

Good traction over the past few months

Traverik currently boasts of 7000 registered users and helps over 50 people make their personalized itinerary on a daily basis. Ashutosh said, “The past few months have been really good for us. The number of daily visitors have increased multifold and we have seen activity on our site go up at least 4 times than what it was earlier.”

When asked about the reason behind this recent growth, he said, “We’re experiment with a lot of internet marketing techniques. I don’t want to reveal too much on that, as we’re still trying out a few things.”

Page Views not important; Trips planned per day is

When asked about other metrics that have shown growth for Traverik, Ashutosh says metrics are always there, but most of their money comes in through partnerships with tour operators. “Once a user is done planning a trip, they can buy tickets from our partner tours and travels, and we charge a small commission on the cost. So the number of trips planned per day is what we’re really worried about,” he said. Today the site does 50 trips a day and according to Ashutosh they are yet to break even. They are currently financed from the support of family and friends.

On Challenges

For Ashutosh, the biggest challenge that they’ve faced so far is data collection on travel destinations. He says, “It’s difficult to get hold of enough data about destination and given the limited bandwidth that we have, this has been our biggest challenge so far. It continues to be.” Apart from this, getting good quality talent is also troubling Traverik. “Getting the right people on board is quite difficult,” he says.

On winning WebSparks

The enthusiasm levels of the team at Traverik have been buoyed upon being adjudged a winning WebSparks company. Ashutosh said, “We were pleasantly surprised when we found that we had won. It has had a very positive impact on the team and has done a world of good for our confidence. The experience of working with the Qualcomm Ventures team was a great experience as well.”

Future plans

When asked about his vision for Traverik, the traveller in Ashutosh came to life. He says, “Being a traveller myself, I know that packaged tours are never a satisfying experience. You want to be in control of your itinerary and that is the problem that we want to solve using Traverik. I’m really looking forward to working on Traverik for as long as I can.”

He also revealed that Traverik will launch an Android app in the coming months. He said, “There are some cool features like a traveller’s mind map, that we’re adding to the app.”

Stay tuned for more updates from Traverik.

If you think you’ve got what it takes to be a WebSparks company, apply here.