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GoIbibo : An Indian Startup Helping you Explore the World

Leave a Comment / Founder, India, Inspiration, Product, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

If you love travelling, then chances are that you swear by GoIbibo! But do you know how GoIbibo got to where it is now, and who made that possible? This time around, we will be looking at Ashish Kashyap’s story and understand how working with multiple large companies helped give Ashish the experience he needed to launch something as massive as Ibibo.

Kashyap’s story has a familiar pattern to it; one we have seen countless times when it comes to Indian entrepreneurs. After getting a business degree from a good university, freshers join large corporations as managers and product designers. After gaining experience working under company greats, they exit a few years down the line to start their own company and turn entrepreneurs! Ashish did the same, as he launched Ibibo in 2007, after heading Google India’s operations and having worked as the General Manager for Indiatimes.com.

The Founder

After finishing his Honors in Economics from the University of Delhi, Ashish went ahead to procure a Masters in Practicing Management from Insead, France. Once he was done with his studies, he joined the prestigious Times Group, and slowly worked his way up the corporate ladder, finally becoming the General Manager of E-Commerce at Indiatimes. Even there, Ashish was looking for new opportunities and successfully launched several e-commerce applications.

Goibibo founder
Image Source: techcircle.in

Similarly, while heading Google India’s operations, Ashish focused on creating a lively and active entrepreneurial environment by building and designing product launches and establishing and building the business. Later, Ashish served as a senior member of PayU global, Netherlands, and helped the conglomerate by spear-heading some well-timed exits to generate income and increase company value. He is also the co-creator of PayU India, which in 2016 acquired CitrusPay. The more Ashish helped businesses grow, the more he realised that this is something he loved to do. It was this realization that led him to found the Ibibo group.

Founding Ibibo

As the internet grew, more websites and applications sprouted, and this led to the creation of a whole new customer segment. As more entrepreneurs burst into the tech field, it opened up avenues for several B2B and B2C companies to come forth and seize the opportunities available. One such service sector, that Ashish felt needed a revamp was the tourism and travel industry. Applications like redBus, GoIbibo and MakeMyTrip have forever changed the way people travel, and none of this would have been possible, if not for Ashish.

When it came down to choosing a name for his company, Ashish drew inspiration from the very movement that made its creation possible; the internet and the power it gave consumers. As the internet grew more popular, it helped shift power to the consumers, and hence, he felt his company’s name should focus on “I build”. The internet also helped people create pieces, connect with others and really made the world a smaller place. This brought together the ‘I bond’ and ‘I build’ elements, which went mashed together to become ‘Ibibo’!

While the company was backed by Napster, it was seen more like a social media experiment, rather than a company. Starting out with just eight employees in 2007, the company soon grew from being an experiment to one of the largest names in the field of travel and tourism, in just five years! It is interesting to note that the company started out with just $50k as seed capital, but by the end of the grew, and became a 15-member team.

The Success

Being the first person in India to sell a plane ticket online, in 2002, Ashish knew how to turn Ibibo into a multi-million-dollar company, and that is exactly what he did. Within a span of two years, the travel agency had its own payment portal that turned out to be a huge success. By 2011, Ibibo had grown by 180% and had become the first online travel agency to assure complete refund on cancellation of bookings. They also partnered with big brands like Citibank, MasterCard and HDFC to better their payment portals.

The same time next year, the company had launched a bus booking option and had even acquired redBus for 600 crores. By 2013, the company was growing at 130%, after having launched its own app for Android and iOS. The same year, the company expanded into the field of hotel bookings, which of late have been able to generate significant amounts of revenue for the company. GoIbibo also launched their engine for flights, Flight Advice in 2013, to help customers choose the best airline service. Since then, they have enjoyed over 140% growth, and even acquired YourBus in 2014. With a team of over 200 professionals, the team also launched a Windows app goCash, to help customers cancel tickets and bookings easily.

In 11 years, the Ibibo Group went from being a small team of employees to a conglomerate that had sizeable properties such as Goibibo.com, redBus.in, YourBus, and Travelboutique with a reach that extended to countries such as Indonesia, Singapore and even Columbia. With over 25 million app downloads and transactions that went over 24 Million USD, the Ibibo group established itself as a stalwart in the field of travel and tourism.

GoIbibo became a pillar for the travel industry in India after Ashish launched Redbus and Rightstay, and soon enough, in 2016 the Ibibo group merged with MakeMyTrip via a deal which was estimated to be worth around $1.8-$2 billion. This, in turn, brought all the businesses under the GoIbibo bracket, under the umbrella MakeMyTrip, whose largest shareholders are Naspers and Tencent.

The Acquisition

Once the acquisition, which was deemed one of the largest ever made in India, came through, Ashish Kashyap stepped down as president of MakeMyTrip, in 2017. He even signed an agreement that forbade him from soliciting and forming a rival company until September 30, 2019. MakeMyTrip which is listed on the American NASDAQ is the ultimate travel application offering everything from flight booking to hotel reservations and car hires.

As the agreement comes to an end this year, it is safe to assume that Kashyap will be back with some new creation soon enough. GoIbibo which started as a social media campaign idea became one of the largest travel e-commerce companies in the span of a mere five years. Having grown 200%, just a year after its launch, GoIbibo provides the kind of success story that inspires us to take chances and go after our dreams!

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Greyparrot : Helping in Saving the World with Computer Algorithms

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With advancements in science and technology, making an impact on almost all spheres of our lives, humans as a whole, have realised that some of these impacts are detrimental. Environmental degradation has been one of the most significant adverse effects of industrialisation and globalisation. We, as a species, have come to a stage where we cannot ignore the ill-effects of such activities. With the polar ice caps melting, average temperatures around the world increasing, and mass extinction looking on the horizon, it is time we take our environment seriously. The best way to make our environment a priority is by leveraging technology, and there are start-ups like Greyparrot that are already helping us achieve that shared dream.

Mikela Druckman is the founder of Greyparrot, a start-up that provides computer vision-enabled products and services to companies that want to upgrade their Artificial Intelligence systems. The company focuses on helping the environment by improving waste management systems by using automation.

Mikela has a rich history in the field of technology, and had previously worked with computer vision and augmented reality. She had led several teams and has worked with multiple global brands, winning numerous awards for her projects. Mikela did her BSc in Management from HEC Lausanne from 2005 to 2009, wherein she was selected for the Erasmus Student Exchange program. As a result of this, she ended up completing her degree from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.

Greyparrot founder
Image Source: greyparrot.ai

Following a Bachelor’s degree, she completed a Master’s in International Management from the National University of Singapore. At the time, she was also the winner at a Tech Entrepreneurship competition. She holds a Masters from the ESADE Business and Law School in International Management, where she served as the Vice-President of the CEMS Club. While pursuing her degree, she worked as an intern in the trading division of Pictet and Cie for a period of three months. She also served as the Project Leader of Junior Entreprise HEC for over two years.

While in Spain, she worked as a Junior Analyst for La Caixa for a duration of 10 months. After graduation, she was the Lead Strategist at Galixo; a position she held for over a year. Following this, she joined Blippar, where she played the role of Brand Partnerships Director for almost two years. Soon after, she became the Commercial Director and then Chief Commercial Officer.

While at Blippar, in 2017, she was hailed as one of the leading female digital managers in Britain by Campaign. In 2018, Mikela was also one among the Top 50 Women recognised by the foundation WeAreTheCity for her entrepreneurial work. Mikela served as the Chief Commercial Officer of Blippar, which is a UK-based tech company working on Augmented Reality and Computer Vision. She even won the award for “Best campaign of 2017” given out by DRUM.

Mikela commenced her career in banking, and later on developed a strong interest in technology, leading to her shifting to tech-based start-ups. In 2012, she joined Blippar and helped grow and expand the company by holding several senior commercial and strategy roles.

She was later appointed to the Global Future Council of the World Economic Forum. Through this role, she provides leadership related advice to technologies and companies that leverage AI and VR. She briefs and guides them on matters related to sustainability and governance of such technology. Being very passionate about technology’s impact on the environment and society, she gave her first TEDx talk on the future of mobility in 2012.

It is this passion that led Mikela Druckman, Marco Paladini, and Nikola Sivacki to establish Greyparrot in January 2019, intending to create a positive impact on both society and the environment. Mikela utilised her technical experience gained by working in the B2C sector and translated it into the B2B industry to achieve this goal. What resulted was a company that leveraged technology such as Machine Learning and Deep learning to sustain smart systems that improved existing waste-management methods.

Most wastes end up in a landfill, and most developed countries such as the US, Canada and UK send their trash to China for recycling. When China banned this practice two years ago; most companies had no clue what to do with all the waste in their hands. This is where GreyParrot steps in, using computer vision to power sorting algorithms that help segregate waste. It is interesting to note that the company was named after the African grey parrot, which imitates human behaviours as the company’s AI aims to do so as well.

After securing the required funding via pre-seed funding, they built a prototype in partnership with Middlesex University. They then went on to partner with a recycling facility based in South Korea to test their technology. Greyparrot essentially helps companies understand the different types of waste they generate, and also uses automation tools to sort the waste as per required standards. In 2019, they were a part of Unbound London, which served as an excellent platform for them to showcase their technology.

With the company providing several services and products such as Smart bins which can sort waste automatically, waste monitoring systems that check composition at every stage of the waste management cycle and automated sorting software that help in waste segregation in Material Recovery Facilities, GreyParrot seems well on their way in helping heal the world, one step at a time. Being a part of Forbe’s list of the UK’s most promising start-ups means the company is looking forward to changing the way the world handles waste!

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Share–Engage-Optimize the SEO Way : Success Story of Yoast

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Nowadays, with Internet access having reached an all-time high, it is not easy to keep customers engaged and satisfied. There is so much content out there on the web that it is quite easy to get lost amongst all that noise and clutter. To stand out and be heard, articles, blogs and all other kinds of media need to be unique and engaging. They also need to follow the right SEO practices so that they are picked up by search engines. Search engine optimisation is every marketers and content creator’s best friend, as it helps their work get the recognition it deserves. The undoubted king of WordPress SEO is Yoast, and this time around, we will be taking a look at how the company started and got to where it is now.

About the Founders

Yoast Founder
Image Source: gelderlander.nl

Joost de Valk started his career working for a digital marketing company. He gave that up and began consulting for big corporations such as eBay and The Guardian. While doing this, he was working on a project of his own- a plugin that would help websites boost their SEO score. It started as a mere hobby because Valk was interested in the algorithms governing SEO.

After a while, he started sensing that there was more to this than what met the eyes, and he began to take it more seriously than just a hobby. He became so busy with this hobby that his actual work started suffering. That was when his wife suggested that maybe he needed to quit his job and start trying to make some money out of the plugin he was working on.

Founding Yoast

The entire empire we now know as Yoast started as one man’s hobby in 2010! He started his blog in 2004, named joostdevalk.nl, and in 2006, began css3.info. In June 2008, he began yoast.com and started making money through advertisements placed on the blog. Halfway through 2010, he felt the time was right to invest in Yoast full time, giving up his job and founding the company.

The journey started with Video SEO, then came WordPress SEO Premium, and this morphed into Yoast SEO Premium. All these ventures became so successful, so fast that they had to make a company around these services. De Valk was the only one involved, handling everything from consulting, to support for the first few years. The initial years were very taxing as he had to single-handedly manage to support the development and testing all on his own. During these years, it was his wife who served as his biggest supporter and aid. Even today it is Joost, Marieke, his wife, and their first employee, Michiel Heijmans who handles almost all the management and logistics.

Joost’s wife, Marieke, shares Joost’s busy lifestyle having majored in sociology with a PhD in Criminology. She began her career as a researcher at Avans University in Den Bosch. But, as her husband’s company, Yoast started picking up, she decided to help out her partner with his work. Her love for writing inspired her to begin creating eBooks, and soon enough, the idea flourished. Marieke is responsible for the entire Yoast Academy tab and has been a tremendous power in assisting in growing the company.

An Instant Success

WordPress is a well-oiled machine that hosts over 74 million websites, and slowly Yoast started gaining momentum, becoming a regular feature in millions of those websites. One of the most significant issues they have had is maintaining and providing support to millions of beloved users.

Joost had to focus on testing early on, as once the business started to expand exponentially, making sure the version had no bugs or errors got more important than ever before. In the early years of the company, testing was an afterthought that rose when someone encountered an error. That practice is long gone, with testing getting two full weeks, as a means to prevent trouble later on in the release.

Yoast SEO 3.0 was a landmark release, as the company shifted 35-40% of their code from PHP to JavaScript. To facilitate the extensive testing that was necessary for this, the team expanded to include about ten developers and ten other support staff. It is astonishing how such a small group is able to pull off such mammoth tasks.

With the company expanding daily, they are in “full-on hiring mode,” having deviated from Joost’s initial plan of never taking on any employees. The team now includes 32 people in the Netherlands and over 50 worldwide. The team has also introduced several fun methods to make the team feel like a family. One such plan includes a “Know Your Colleague” Quiz which contains over 26 questions regarding the music taste and favourite colour of employees. The team also has a 40-hour workweek, unlike other start-ups and tech companies which demand a minimum of 60 hours a week, with Joost working for longer hours, as he is the leading man.

Joost de Valk single-handedly built WordPress tools to help site owners optimize their content and get discovered by search engines. Doing so helped make webpages more user-friendly, intuitive and reliable, making him one of the chief names in SEO. What makes this success story so inspiring is the fact that it is essentially the story of one man turning his hobby into a multi-million-dollar business!

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Tweeting the Right Way : Success Story of Buffer

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With the Internet having expanded exponentially, in the past two decades, it is harder than ever before to keep people engaged. Whether it is a fashion brand or a blog, it is no longer easy to keep customers interested, because there is just so much competition out there. With over 124 billion business emails being sent and received every day, how do companies and brands stay relevant? The only way to stay ahead is to have the right content development and marketing strategy. Having the right digital marketing strategy can now make or break companies, and that is where companies like Buffer help make a difference.

Joel Gascoigne and Leo Widrich founded Buffer in 2010, and it has over the years developed to become one of the biggest players in the social media marketing management niche. The company banked over $1 million in cash recently and even raised more than $3.5 million in the capital. They have also experimented with several things, such as making the hiring and recruitment process a lot more transparent, investing in employee training and even trying out self-management. These pendulum shifts in management did not hamper Buffer but rather contributed to its growth, so much so that, it has over 700,000 users a month now.

The Founders

Being an entrepreneur is not just about mergers, acquisitions and bottom lines, but rather, it is an emotional rollercoaster that is fascinating. No story is more engaging in that aspect than Leo Wildrich’s; the man who co-founded a company that hauls in profits over $10 million a year.

Buffer founders
Image Source: flickr.com

Leo Widrich was born and brought up in the quaint Austrian town of Melk, and dreamt of becoming a professional footballer. Though a part of the football academy in St. Pölten, a knee injury at 15, saw him bid farewell to that dream and focus more on his academics. Once he was done with school in Vienna, his fellow schoolmates inspired him to go to college abroad, and so he did, choosing to attend Warwick Business School. Here, he met Joel Gascoine who, at the time, was working on a prototype for a social media management software. The two friends decided to join forces, and soon enough, the small idea grew till it became a full-time job, which made the pair quit college and move to the Silicon Valley.

Founding Buffer

Seven weeks into the company’s inception, users started paying for the service, and angel investors contributed 400,000 euros just before their personal investment ran out. Buffer, which started off as a tweet scheduling app soon evolved into a social media management app which makes over $4 million a year. Buffer now helps startups manage their Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and LinkedIn marketing efforts, and has turned into a kind of entrepreneurial necessity.

Initially, Joel wrote the code and Leo Widrich marketed the software. Early on, Buffer had difficulty finding a voice because most top blogs refused to air their pieces. As a result, Leo set up the Bluffer blog and began by writing the blog’s initial pieces. Starting with three articles a month, demand quickly led to him writing over four articles a week. Thus, the wheels were set in motion, and Buffer started gaining momentum. Ten months later, Buffer had more than 100,000 users, and this prompted the duo to leave for Silicon Valley to start their fundraising.

The Success

Following the shift to the US, Buffer started recruiting more writers to keep up with the demand. Over 45 writers posted as guests on Buffer, and slowly yet surely, the tribe began to grow! It was not just the number of writers that grew, but also the frequency of posting. From three articles a month, the Buffer blog now posts almost daily. They got themselves on an AngelPad platform, raised multiple rounds of funding and grew to amass over a million users. The company even acquired Respond to expand their business. Over the years, they revolutionised the industry by bringing forth unique policies that celebrated transparency and even survived a compromising hack.

Presently, the company boasts a team of over 80 employees spread across the world, working in over 15 different countries. Since their early days, Buffer has emphasized on providing a great environment for their employees, and this, in turn, has led to the great employee and customer satisfaction. Having proven their mettle time and time again, the company now helps brands as large as GitHub, Shopify, Huckberry and Microsoft do their business.

Having shaped their entire company policy around customer satisfaction and brand building, helped Buffer grow an extremely loyal customer base of over a million users. Maintaining a high-quality blog has also gone a long way in helping them keep their customers engaged. Most of their blogs now garner up to 4000 shares on Twitter, with some of them occasionally hitting 8000 shares. Hence, it is easy to see that Buffer’s success is mainly due to a well-established and thought of marketing strategy, which is exactly what it helps other companies do!

Leo Widrich’s story is so much more than just a success story, but rather is a testament to the human spirit and is an inspiring tale of pushing and discovering yourself. From travelling the world, enjoying the best of things, Widrich moved to the woods and found himself. More than anything else, this story re-iterates how important it is to stay true to yourself even when it isn’t easy to do so.

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imo : Communication App Making the People Connect with Eachother Better

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Out of the twenty initial employees that Google hired, only six still work there. This includes its founding fathers Larry Page and Sergey Brin. So what happened to the others? Are they off making ripples in other technology-based companies? Well, some of them definitely are, and this time around, we are looking at one such pair- George and Ralph Harik, the founders of imo.

Certain early Google employees became entrepreneurs in their own right, while others turned into angel investors, and several others worked their way up the corporate ladder and became top executives at different companies. A few of them even retired happily. But George Harik had other plans in mind when he left Google. He and his brother Ralph co-founded the messaging application imo.

The Harik brothers were born in Beirut, Lebanon, but grew up in the commercial capital, Dubai. Both were naturally interested in technology, with Georges starting his programming journey on an Apple II when he was just ten years old. The family moved to the US, and both brothers got degrees in computer science, with Georges graduating from the University of Michigan with a PhD and Ralph being an MIT alumnus, and taking up jobs centred around the Silicon Valley.

imo founders
Image Source: businessinsider.com

In 1999, Georges Harik got a call from a friend working at Silicon Graphics informing him that a friend of his was founding a company. Since he had a job of his own at the time, the invitation didn’t sound all that promising. Or that was, until Larry Page, sent him an email regarding Google, and invited him over for dinner. That dinner changed Harik’s life, as it convinced him to join Google.

Georges was recruited into Google’s initial engineering committee as a software engineer and worked at Google from 1999 to 2005. Following this, he left the company and invested in several other tech-based companies. While at Google, Georges served as the Director of Product Management and worked on applications such as Gmail, Google Talk, and Picasa. He also worked as the manager of Googlettes and was involved with the development of AdSense and AdWords Online. Following his exit from Google, he was an advisor for GV, which is the venture capital arm of Alphabet. Then he moved into the field of angel investing and funded several tech-start-ups and also co-founded hslabs, before joining his brother to found imo.

Meanwhile, Ralph was working for Oracle. The fact that Georges worked with Android applications, while at Google, opened his eyes to the future implications of this sector. This served as inspiration for him to collaborate with his brother and found a new startup. A few years down the line, the brothers quit their respective jobs and together founded the instant messaging application imo in 2007.

imo started as a web-based app and has since branched out to mobile networks, helping bridge communication gaps that existed. Ralph’s education at MIT gave him enough technical knowledge to handle imo’s initial coding in the early days. When it came to revenue generation, on the other hand, Georges’ training at Google gave him in-depth knowledge regarding internet advertising. Ralph, who is the CEO, handles the day-to-day management of the company, while Georges is tasked with product design and studying new technologies.

Since its inception, imo has grown to cover over seven million users as the application allows users to connect to more than eleven different messaging networks across various platforms such as desktops, tablets and smartphones. Users can use the application to text via either voice or video chat with other individuals or groups. The application utilises cloud storage, and hence every message sent and received via the app is stored on a web-based cloud. This allows users to switch devices with ease, significantly increasing the application’s accessibility. imo has also launched voice calling options for iOS users, making it easier than ever before to call up a loved one. Ralph enlisted his big brother Georges’ help to found the messaging app because he felt that the communication industry needed some radical changes.

While imo started out with just five employees, it now has over 20 people working for it from Palo Alto. The company has grown from being an innovative idea that two brothers had, to a considerable company whose product has over 4 million downloads with more than 50 million messages being sent every day.

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Sebastian Siemiatkowski : The Founder of Swedish Buy-Now-Pay-Later Fintech Klarna

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There have been many rags to riches story, among which, Jack Ma’s rejection story is on the top. In almost every such story, the people who have succeeded once had difficulty in even earning their one time meal. But as time changes, their hard work takes them to new heights, and they only set up new examples for other people. One such story is of the founder of Klarna, a Swedish version of Paypal, which was founded by Sebastian Siemiatkowski in 2005. Siemiatkowski was not rejected, but had a similar humble background and worked at Burger King. And now, like Ma, he has also established himself as one of the successful entrepreneurs in the tech industry.

Early Life

Sebastian Siemiatkowski met his future partner and friend Niklas Adalberth, at Burger King, where both worked as part-timers. Later, the two went on to join the Stockholm School of Economics to pursue a graduate degree in Economics. At the college, they even met the third co-founder of Klarna, Victor Jacobsson.

The two while studying and working together always discussed new startup ideas, but none of them was sure about what they should really do. During their college, they decided to take a year’s off and travel the world without flying. The two went to explore the world through road trips and on ships. This way, they got extra time to think about their career.

Klarna founder
Image Source: businessinsider.com

Founding Klarna

While back from the trip, Siemiatkowski joined sales job and came across the emerging concept of e-Commerce. While working with the sales department, he got to know that it is quite difficult to sell things online, as people do not trust the online payment systems. This problem later became the basis for Klarna.

Siemiatkowski discussed the problem with Niklas and decided to build a new payment system for people to make the purchases. Jacobsson also joined in, and they participated in the Stockholm School of Economics annual entrepreneurship award with the idea. Though Siemiatkowski and his partners had a lot of faith in the idea, it could not make to the finals. In fact, it was one of the lasts. But Jane Walerud, an angel investor, showed interest in the idea and invested in it. He even helped the three co-founders to meet a good development team.

Finally, in the mid of 2005, Siemiatkowski along with his partners founded Klarna and opened its first office in Sweden. They started by offering the option of paying for the goods after receiving them. This led the consumers to trust Klarna faster, as they were hesitant about buying things online. But with Klarna, they could pay after deciding if they wanted to keep the goods.

The Success

The company received another investment from AB Öresund in 2007. In 2010, the company expanded its services to Norway, Finland, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands. The same years, Klarna also received investment from Sequoia Capital, and the company’s revenue raised by 80%.

In 2011, the company was named as one of Europe’s 100 most promising young tech companies by The Telegraph. In a round of funding, led by General Atlantic Klarna raised a $155M investment. The company also acquired the Israeli company Analyzd specialising in risk management and online payments. Klarna then expanded its services to the US. This expansion has contributed a lot to the growth of Klarna. In the same year, the company’s revenues made it one of the Unicorns in the country.

By 2018, the company registered around 60M users, and around 90,000 online merchants were using Klarna to carry out their payments. In the latest round of funding held in 2019, Klarna raised $460 million, Dragoneer Investment Group, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, HMI Capital, Merian Chysalis Investment Company Limited being the major investors. This funding round made the company value at $5.5 billion, and it became the largest fintech start-up in Europe.

Through the story of Klarna, we definitely can say that hard work can really change one’s life if it is put in the right direction.