Get ENVIGOrated ...

One of my friends from school and college and afterlife has actually started a cool market analytics firm in Delhi - you should check him out.

www.envigo.co.uk They have some kick ass people and you can be assured of a great customer experience. His team has run multimillion pound campaigns for major European travel sites (including the TravelPort UK subsidiary - EBookers).

Cool beans.

New stuff on my del.icio.us

Finally got back to working and indexing my del.icio.us entries - added a lot of great new stuff recently ...


There is this venture capital site for young entrepreneurs called Youth Venture Capital Network which I just subscribed too .. got some interesting insights and a lot of senior people who support the cause and can help with insights, direction and (hopefully!) funding...

There was an interested statistic on the 'types of people' who become VCs - it said the top sourse was I-Banks and the traditional investment banking side - and then it was management consulting . Here is the link to that ( I am not sure if its very scientific) survey.


Then I added this great link to Off West End (ala Off Broadway in NY) theatre. This provides a definitely cooler alternative to traditional west end fare and the ticket prices let you go on a much more regular basis .. !

Having said that - we did get tickets to the BlueMan Group and to Mamma Mia over the next couple of weeks - so that should be a good deal ..


The rest of them are more linked to my travel research ... and I think I will lump them all in my next post...

Freaky Levitt

Steven Levitt is one of coolest dudes around when it comes to linking real world happenings to microeconomic neo-classical-keynesian-and-whatever-else economics ... I just found his blog and subscribed to it the other day. Its on feedburner.

His blog has a lot of good stuff and new topics very similar to what he wrote in his book...

Travel Sites

Been doing a lot of research on travel sites over the last few weeks. There has been a bunch of progress in a lot of areas - especially with regard to internalization of a lot of the US travel firms search results...

I am still wondering why GOOG hasn't bought a travel company yet .. ?

My friend Saurabh for many years through school college etc etc works for a major UK travel firm - and has some very interesting thoughts on how to make money and drive traffic to his company website.

One of the interesting ones which has a US presence and which is internationalizing is 'Kayak'. I currently live in the UK and I am using their kayak.co.uk version for booking my European travel. Its has excellent features like

1. Drag drop on what time you want to go for
2. Listing of all amenties by hotel
3. Listing of all airlines and their prices with easy to 'uncheck' check boxes
4. Listing of all airports with an uncheck capability.

Another good meta search engine with cool features is farechase - now owned by Yahoo. I use this more than Kayak because I can arbitrage the dollar pound exchange rate (thank GOD I moved to the UK in march - if I had moved now I would have been 10% poorer). Its also interesting on how these sites have a lot of single sign on capabilities with a number of different service providers - pretty impressive considering there are literally 100s of different providers they source data from. But I suppose thats their lifeblood to make sure they get their cut if their business model is linked to a fee per completed transaction ! But from the looks of it, kayak and farechase are hedging and going for a fair amount of advertising also.


Now the question which always comes to my mind is how these meta sites are going to monetise and track conversion rates and set up deals with ebookers, orbitz, expedia etc. For e.g - if I look at my buyer behavior - I would

1. Go to these sites
2. Check out their rates
3. Go directly to the airline in question
4. Save the 10 quid on the booking fee which would normally go to these sites

So net-net - if a lot of customers start wisening up to this - they these guys are going to get blown out of the water.

However - they do provide value when it comes to building products like weekend breaks, last minute deals (Lastminute.com!) and most definitely when it comes to aggregating and showing hotel information (Especially farechase - its awesome for any global location).


Will post a separate note on some interesting other (US based) search options for airline tickets tommorrow ..

and its back to the Good times...

What have I been upto for the last 6 months ? I would say pretty much focussed on the Mundane matter of getting employed and settled down in School ...


Now that thats out of the way .. .I can get back to making this a regular blog !

Being a student AND having a job is like having the most carefree world ever ..

1. You don't have much to do
2. You can do a bunch of other stuff
3. You can travel like crazy !

......... and the last thingie is what I am going to probably be doing for the next 6 months or so ...

Been off this...

For a long while !

back with a vengence now !

All new look - Will have to go change location, what I am doing, the fact that I am married and a bunch of other stuff :-)

Link to a Old Pal

Who got a blog.

Writes some good stuff.

http:\\saurabh-kumar.blogspot.com

And then its me too ...

Visit this - its pretty cool - and I am sure you will like it !

Cheers

www.kirtiwedsprashanth.com

Scott McNealy's statement ..

'The Network is the computer' - is being echoed again by Rajesh Jain in this post
He spins a different context though - and links this to the emerging market and how it can create mass computer adoption.

Could this tie into Nicolas Negroponte's $100 PC ?

Abre Se Lojos

My two bits of spanish - from my ever so nice teacher - Sonya Gupta - This site makes you sit up and think ... open your eyes ..

Thanks Screenhead

Google This Google That

Then you have Oogle , Gaggle, Moogle, Frugle, Poogle, Smeagle.

One of the best links I have seen on the web yet - Very creative !

Warren Buffet's famous few

Never thought of how lucky all of you who are reading this are - Warren Buffet sums up this in his advice.

We have won a 'lottery' to be in a position where we are. Excellent read.

Thanks Darren

Hack my Life ...

Lifehacker.com is a cool site which indexes a lot of interesting hacks which improve productivity and manage technology better.