FullHyderabad May 11, 2008
Posted by Pallav Sharda in : Local Search, Travel , add a commentFullHyderabad is an online city guide for Hyderabad and Secunderabad. The site has been operational since 2000 but like most of the bottom-up web startups, hasn’t gained a lot of traction (see the compete.com stats below- although I dont trust compete 100%, there is a story that the almost-real numbers tell).
What I like about the site is it’s perseverance. FullHyderabad has stuck it out for more than 8 years with what seems like little outside financial support (they seem to have the usual ad-based business model). The site is fairly well designed and navigation is not hard to understand. Even though I know little about Hyderabad, the site content seems to be significant. There are classifieds, event info, hotel info etc. that seem to be fairly uptodate, although I do think that homepage is a bit overstuffed.
I think local entrepreneurial efforts like FullHyderabad are essential building blocks for web as an knowledge infrastructure. Once the physical web-connectivity starts being ubiquitous, what India will need to attract and retain internet users is content. The data gathered by initiatives like FullHyderabad will collectively fill that gap, and make internet useful for the masses. Hope they survive on their own and resist being consumed by one of the horizontal portals like yahoo/rediff/Indiatimes etc.
Inasra July 28, 2007
Posted by Aparna T in : Travel , 1 comment so farInasra was one of the participants at Proto.in 2007, the startup showcase event that we’ve reviewed earlier. Inasra is interesting, as the first one that seems to focus on the India accommodation category, among a large number of travel startups focusing on air tickets or holiday packages.
They have affiliations to 3500 hotels in 400 Indian cities, an easy-to-use website, and all the usual features - search by city and dates of travel, budget, plus a variety of hotel amenities, listing of room rates for different room types, and credit card payment processing. I haven’t found too many sites that list anything below a 3-star hotel, so it’s nice to find some budget hotels here. It works well for large/medium cities or tourist
destinations, though the number of hotels listed for some smaller towns is a lot fewer, and not cheap. Inasra helpfully finds rates and contact info for hotels not affiliated with itself, so that the traveler can book it himself.
Inasra’s Minimum Advance charge on reservation confirmation is non-refundable. This information needs to be a clearly visible Cancellations/Refund Policy link at the top, as is standard among travel sites,
not buried in a small Terms and Conditions link at the bottom of the page.
The other area where improvement is needed is the limited phone support - not available on Sundays, and after 8 pm on other days. One can’t expect a customer who may arrive at a hotel at 9pm on Friday and find the hotel doesn’t have his reservation, to wait till the following Monday 10am to sort it out.
innINDIA July 7, 2007
Posted by Pallav Sharda in : Travel , add a commentinnINDIA plans to be a horizontal portal aggregating information and services for India. It’s not there in terms of content, but I’m not going to pound on them because they are one of the few Indian sites that have put up a “Beta” sign.
The layout for website still seems to be shaping up- there is no good navigation through the various sections (once you clicked on ‘Indian Recipes’, no way to go back to homepage). Self-reported press releases claim health search engine launch, postal code search launch, etc. The overall business plan is unclear to me at this point, and no good indication as to what they aim to deliver to web customers. All in all, nothing worth looking into.
HimachalHotels.in June 6, 2007
Posted by Pallav Sharda in : Travel , add a commentSpam may be of some use, after all. Sheetal Dawar, a representative from HimachalHotels.in recently spammed my ‘About’ page with a lengthy advertisement for their website.
Before hitting the delete button on that comment, I decided to check the website out. Turned out to be worth the effort. Although it has the annoying blinking graphics (another case in point for my Hallmarks of an average Indian website post), the content was decent enough. They have lodging information (most have at least one picture), packages and ‘Extreme Adventure’ activities available; along with an toll-free US number 
. Of course, I haven’t tried them out, but in the past I’ve traveled in the Himachal region enough to know that the info is relevant and somewhat useful.
For sure, Himachal is a beautiful destination. If you are planning a trip, this may be a worthwhile site. [There. I've promoted your website, Sheetal. But don't spam blogs if you want to advertise... just send a email asking for an honest review]
IndiaMike April 8, 2007
Posted by Pallav Sharda in : Travel , 2commentsIndiaMike is a travel forum focused on India. It’s a great resource for getting candid travel advise if you are planning to visit India. The interface is simple and straight-forward, without obtrusive advertisements.
There is an interesting story behind IndiaMike. It started as a personal page in late 2001 for a guy named Mike, and grew into a community of nearly 10,000 members over six years. Now its run by another philanthropic soul Arjun. Compete reports nearly 6000 unique monthly visitors for it, which is pretty good, if you ask me.
The site doesn’t have a source of revenue, so I hope it keeps going on its own.
Cleartrip January 17, 2007
Posted by Pallav Sharda in : Travel , add a commentAllright, keep counting. Here is another travel portal - Cleartrip. It’s probably the youngest of the bunch; they launched beta in July 2006. The site actually looks very clean- a different look from its peers.
Apparently they got $3 million in funding early 2006 from Kleiner Perkins and Google backer Ram Shriram. Seems like VC’s are placing multiple bets in this promising area to see which one takes off.
TravelMartIndia January 17, 2007
Posted by Pallav Sharda in : Travel , add a commentTravelMartIndia is another addition to our eIndia travel websites list. One of our helpful readers pointed it out. I dont have any experience with it, but digging on the web brought up the fact that it was probably the first operational portal for India (started around March 2000).
Traveljini January 13, 2007
Posted by Pallav Sharda in : Travel , add a commentTraveljini is another indian travel portal (I’ve got to stop saying that.. it’s loosing it’s effect). This one seems unpopular for the lack of usability and below-average design.
FlightRaja January 13, 2007
Posted by Pallav Sharda in : Travel , add a commentFlightraja is another take at indian online travel market. They went live in July 2006, and are not VC funded (at least till now).
I’m not counting travel websites anymore.
Yatra January 13, 2007
Posted by Pallav Sharda in : Travel , 2commentsAllright, I’m on a roll with the travel portals. Here is another player’- Yatra went beta in July 2006, and were funded with $5 million in Jan 2006 by Norwest Venture Partners.
It’s official people - the indian online travel market is now overcrowded and overfunded.