Pushpinder Singh
Founder
Travelkhana
Short Description
He is a Founder of Travelkhana
Company Profile
Travelkhana is a marketplace that connects passengers with several restaurants on the Indian Rail network. It offers a variety of choices to a Railway passenger so that the passengers can order food as per their liking and at their price point while they are travelling. The Travelkhana automated platform, tracks trains in real time across India and ensures that fresh food is delivered to the passenger as per their choice in real time. It also helps vendors and restaurants in terms of effective and efficient fulfillment. Additionally, it completes an entire fulfillment cycle right from the point of ordering to Delivery, Customer feedback and Reconciliation.
Risk Involved
The greatest risk in a business like this is that we will miss out on the deliveries since the delivery cycle is very short and the window during which deliveries have to happen and have to be maximized. This has been addressed with our proprietary workflow engine that syncs itself with the real time train movement such that deliveries happen without fail.Our workflow uses SMS updates to both our customer as well as vendor very effectively so as to well manage and handle this problem. Moreover the workflow is specially customized to rules that make this very intelligent and thus have helped us reduced the delivery failure to less than 4% and no shows less than 0.50%.Additionally we have to train our vendors in various aspects such as packaging, deliveries and other important issues because large numbers of them come from smaller cities.
Most Critical Decision
We have made several decisions and pointing to one critical decision is a difficult deal. The most critical decision was when we shifted our focus from Air travel to Rail travel as a business. We initially started with our focus around Air travel.The other critical decision was to go ahead with the customer validation pilot. That gave us the confidence that go ahead with this business, as we tasted early success in our validations.
Difficulties Faced
1.Convincing investors.2.Convincing partners and team members to come on board.
Motivating Employees
We do not do anything significantly different or unique. We communicate and have a joint ownership of things. We also provide them a freedom to express and experiment.Additionally we encourage people to take actions without the risk of loosing or committing mistakes.
Choosing People
We do pretty objective hiring. We choose the person who is sound for a particular job. One of the key qualities that we look at is that person is willing to be coached and learn on the job and is not afraid to take actions despite his/her apprehension that failure may happen.
Reaching Investors
I have found each of my potential investors to be very smart, intelligent and asking the right set of questions. I have learnt many new things from these people and I have deep respect for them. They have been receptive as well and thus we have our Angel round completed. Now we are looking for the first major round of funding.