With 40k downloads, audio & video guide for monuments Guiddoo gets into Dubai’s in5
Guiddoo is an in-destination mobile app (the travel space demystified) that provides audio and video guides for monuments. Founded in the middle of 2013 by Nidhi Varma, Guiddoo is now at 40 monuments and plans to cover 300+ monuments in the coming few months. In terms of traction, Guiddoo has 40,000 downloads now across platforms and the company recently got through to Dubai's in5 program.
in5 is a Dubai internet city backed program which incubates technology companies that are based in the Middle East or have products which focus on the region. Thecenter has the following objectives: fostering entrepreneurship, driving technology innovation, contributing to shaping an ICT ecosystem and promoting Dubai as an ideal location for tech startups. FishFishme is another company which we recently wrote aboutfrom the current in5 batch. Guiddoo is the first Indian company to make it to the program.
The tourism space
According to this UN World Tourism report, a billion people travelled internationally in 2013. 54% of these were leisure travellers with another 60% having travelled to key monuments and tourist spots. The target market for an app like Guiddoo is placed at $200 million. “Our team did an extensive survey during the conceptualization stage and we found that these travellers spend on an average $80 on various activities like tour guides, monument ticketing, souvenir shopping, etc,” says Nidhi.
The in-destination space in India with has heated up with companies like Tushky and Poshvine settling on a model and directly competing with Guiddoo. There is also BlumeVentures-backed AudioCompass directly competing in the space..
The road ahead
For Guiddoo, the app has crossed 40,000 downloads across platforms now and is getting 300-400 new users every day. “We have also seen strong rise in traffic internationally with India accounting for only 25-30% traffic now and other places like Cambodia, Spain, the US, UK, Egypt, Italy, France and China pitching in,” says Neha. Guiddoo has also translated into various languages with the Play store pages.
Guiddoo started out by keeping the app paid but have now moved away to the in-app purchase model. "We also realized that the people whom we are targeting are price insensitive in the 1-5 $ range," says co-founder Vineet. With the $0.99 price point, Guiddoo had about 4,000 downloads.
From the technology perspective, Guiddoo is in the process of integrating augmented reality,location-based automatic audio guides and research initiated into Google Glass GDK files.
