A work related incident with Krishna Kumar and his wife Kavitha Somasekharan ushered them into starting TravelSpoc in January 2019. The startup is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) based ecosystem that makes the best travel experience available to travellers – sourced from multiple travel agents.

Krishna Kumar was working in New York and had to send an important courier to the Bangalore office of the MNC he worked for. But, at the courier agent’s office, he realised that his official travel card limit has been exceeded.

While a few local contacts managed to help him out, this incident made him want to explore the travel space. Krishna spoke to various travel agents and realised that about 1.2 million of them were on the verge of closure due to the rise of online travel booking applications.

“Most travel agents were not using the latest technologies and there was no common online platform for them to sell their products. They did not have enough market intelligence to understand the requirements of their customers. On the other hand, travellers were desperately in need of having a personal connection in unknown destinations,” says Krishna.

Headquartered in Thiruvananthapuram, TravelSpoc has a team of 14. It is a collaborative common platform for tour operators and travel intermediaries across the world to showcase their tour packages and travel products, and sell online in their brand and identity.

Using the platform, users can make their own customised travel plans and get it booked by an agent on TravelSpoc. They can also compare packages from different agents before they purchase it.

Krishna has a PhD in Management from IIMC and more than 19 years of experience in management across top MNCs in the IT industry. Kavitha, on the other hand, is an entrepreneur and technocrat with more than 14 years of experience in the IT industry, building full-fledged travel and healthcare marketplaces.

“The platform solves problems faced by agents and travellers alike. For the agents, we built a SaaS-based traveller management platform to help them manage and analyse customer bookings and its data to improve business relations with customers, assisting in customer retention and driving sales growth. For the traveller, we help them get the best deals in a single click,” says Krishna.

The process involves bringing both travellers and trusted local and expert travel specialists on a single ecosystem. Since it is a self-sustained ecosystem, tour operators can sell their unique and best deals to travellers by understanding their requirements.

TravelSpoc was also selected in the first tourism startup competition by United Nations World Tourism Organisation. Also, GITEX Dubai and Innovfest Unbound at Singapore brought the product accolades for the innovativeness and uniqueness. The startup is also working towards creating one million new job opportunities in the travel industry by 2025.