Routofy tries to plug gap in travel apps by offering single tab ‘door-to-door’ bookings

Routofy co-founder Ronka Gupta

How did you get the idea of building this app?

I spent a semester in France under IIT Delhi’s semester exchange programme during my graduation. Though enthusiastic about travelling across Europe, I faced my first roadblock trying to figure out a suitable way to reach my desired destinations. I would open multiple tabs for flight, train, bus schedules and prices and try to find indirect routes to the places. I realised that the problem becomes more complex in the case of India as the system is much more complicated and fraught with delays, which inspired me to start Routofy.

Initially a route-planning portal that allows users to know ‘how to reach’ any destination across India, Routofy’s app was launched after realising that making multiple bookings on mobile is tremendously painful and time-consuming. The app allows users to book door-to-door journeys in one shot by combing flights, trains, buses and cabs for their itinerary.

We truly believe that for every complex problem in this world, there exists an extremely elegant solution. We still haven’t realised the true power of technology to find that elegant solution for travel planning. Routofy is an attempt in that direction.

There are many travel apps out in the market. Why would users want to use this particular one?

The current players in the market follow the tried-and-tested model of having separate tabs for different modes, where the user is left to coordinate and make separate bookings for each of these.

Our product is different as it is multi-modal and lets users combine, compare and  book realistic combinations providing door-to-door bookings instead of the conventional city-to-city transport. Plus, there is express single checkout for the entire entire itinerary. “If it is on Google Maps, we can take you there. And there is travel assistance on your journey last-minute cab bookings, web check-in, transport delay information, and so on.”

There is an just an option to browse trains and check availability in your app. Are you cutting any deal with IRCTC to include booking option too?

We are looking into incorporating train bookings in our app as well in the near future, so that we can make the one-shot booking process even more seamless for travellers.

Since railway booking is out of the package, at least for now, how different is your app from other travel apps?

Even if users do not get to book train tickets at Routofy yet, they do get to know the schedules & availability of train tickets for multi-modal routes.

Is there any smart algorithm behind the search and pricing options?

We developed a technology-driven algorithm to process more than 250,000 results in a fraction of a second in real-time; it compared and combined flights, trains, buses and cabs to produce the routes. We devised a ‘Wow Rating’ that takes various factors, such as duration of travel, availability and prices, into consideration to find the best routes and display them according to their ranks. Our app and website now allows users to book these multi-modal routes in one shot.

The message ‘Unfortunately, Routofy has stopped’ appears when I browse for international travels. Is it a bug or is your app only covering domestic destinations? Are you planning to expand and go international?

When we initially launched the app in January-end 2016, we started off with only domestic connectivity. Since then, we have incorporated international travel as well on the app.

How well-connected is your service across the sub-continent? Are you bringing in any other private players, like Uber which you already have, to expand the network and connectivity?

We have already brought a number of vendors onboard, including Uber, which are helping us achieve this level of penetration across the world and allow people to make door-to-door bookings on our platform. As more players come onboard, our product will offer even more exhaustive and seamless options.

Could you tell our readers a bit more about the ‘Gems’ option available in your app?

‘Gems’ are the reward points offered to Routofy users for making bookings on the Routofy app, referring the app to friends & family or for promotional purposes. These Gems can be redeemed on future bookings made on the Routofy platform to receive discounts. In fact, Routofy has introduced an innovative referral program, wherein the referrer gets lifetime discounts for spreading the word about the new app.

Are you self-funding for your app? Or are there any big investors involved?

Last year we got seed funding from Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal. Routofy is gearing up for a Series A round of funding at the beginning of the next financial year.