September 27, 2024 • 32 mins
Disrupting Travel with Spotnana: Sarosh Waghmar on Building the AWS for the Travel Industry
In this episode, we hosted Sarosh Waghmar, Founder and Chief Product Officer at Spotnana.
Sarosh shares his journey of over two decades in the travel tech industry and discusses Spotnana's mission to transform travel by creating an 'AWS for the travel industry.'
The conversation delves into the challenges and innovations of building a platform that emphasizes trust, transparency, and a seamless user experience.
We also discussed the impact of AI and the future of travel tech.
Key insights include the importance of building a platform that allows others to innovate, the role of cloud-native architectures, and the significance of standing on the shoulders of giants to drive industry-wide change.
Connect with Sarosh on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/swaghmar/
00:00 Introduction
00:40 Sarosh Waghmar's Background and Travel Industry Insights
01:33 Challenges and Innovations in Travel Tech
03:04 Spotnana's Vision and Platform Approach
04:00 Building During COVID and Overcoming Obstacles
07:31 Creating a New Category: Travel as a Service
20:18 Future of Travel Tech and AI Integration
29:51 Lightning Round: Personal Insights
Visit our website - https://saassessions.com/
Connect with me on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunilneurgaonkar/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Sunil (00:07):
Hey everyone, welcome to the latest episode of the SAS
sessions podcast.
today we have Sarosh Vagmar onthe show with us.
Sarosh has spent over twodecades in building into the
travel industry and currently isthe founder and chief product
officer at Spotnana.
So hey Sarosh, it's a pleasureto have you on the show.
Sarosh (00:26):
Thanks Salim.
Looking forward to it.
Appreciate you setting this up.
Sunil (00:30):
Awesome.
Awesome.
for people who don't knowSpotnana, it's a, they're
building like an AWS for thetravel industry.
And in this episode, we aregoing to, go into depth talking
about the same with Saroj.
I know like Saroj, I gave a veryshort intro about you.
you spend two decades intotravel tech, that's like super,
like subject matter expertisethat you must have built in the
(00:51):
industry.
So why don't you like introduceyourself in more words and.
Tell us more about you and howhas your journey been into the
SaaS ecosystem?
Sarosh (01:01):
Great.
firstly, as I said, you spenttwo decades and I still feel I
know nothing.
travel is, I always say thattravel is a human emotion.
It connects all of us.
And, at the same time, COVIDshowed us, when, the single
industry that was most affectedby COVID, as was the travel
industry.
the entire world did.
And, we never knew what wasgoing to happen, but this is one
(01:22):
of those industries that justkeeps coming back.
And, if you think about it, itconnects all of us in some way
or the other.
We need to do these things inperson.
We need to connect with each ofour fellow humans.
And I think travel is one waythat makes that possible.
talking about the travelindustry and my experience in
that, been doing this, since,2003.
And, three.
And, as you all know, that,travel is complex in the sense,
(01:45):
booking a trip is easy, butsometimes you have to wait for
six hours to make a cancellationor a refund.
It's not a click of a button asAmazon is.
when you think of someone likean Amazon, it's so easy to shop
on it.
You get everything and yourarely compare prices going to
Amazon and comparing fivedifferent websites, but I'm sure
Sunil you and everyone elselistening, when you look for
(02:06):
flights, we're comparing 10different websites.
Why?
Now that's the question I keepasking everybody is why do you
do that?
We all do that because we allbelieve there's a deal to be had
right at the end of the day, onewebsite or another or hotel
prices, and that's The singlebiggest problem that we're
trying to solve is why does onewebsite show a low fare versus
your travel agent?
And sometimes if you'retraveling with your entire
(02:28):
family, personal travel, letalone business travel, you might
go to the extent of callingpeople offline and just doing
all these crazy things just sothat you could save money.
And it's, this is just a, one ofthose things as we, as human
beings do is because There's notenough transparency on the
pricing and the whole premise ofwhat we are building today at
Spotman is how do we createtrust and transparency for this
(02:50):
industry?
how do you create this Amazonlike experience where you can
get all the offers that youwant, all the prices of all the
hotels and airlines and etcetera, et cetera, from all the
suppliers and be able to makethe best possible decision for
yourself.
And I think that is really whatwe are focused on as Spotman is
how do we build this platformand.
(03:10):
We've taken this platform firstapproach of building out this
tech stack that is challenginghow the legacy industry has been
built on top of this over thelast several years.
I think our whole focus is howdo you make this seamless and
how do you make travelaccessible to everybody at the
end of the day?
Sunil (03:28):
Nice.
Nice.
and you mentioned a good point,right?
whenever you like, at least I'mtrying to book a ticket, like
the, I know that our aggregatorsand, at this point, you are even
like looking at differentaggregators because Like you're
comparing like even aggregatorsto one another, right?
Like to find exactly.
And nobody ever said Hey, I'mready to pay for a higher price.
(03:49):
Nobody ever said that, right?
Like I'm happy to pay a higherprice.
everybody wants like deals anddiscounts and book at the lowest
cost.
But, interesting point, Saroj,you mentioned like you started.
during COVID, right?
Like exactly 2020.
And, that was the time whentravel, if anything, was the
most affected.
what made you start then?
Like specifically in like 2020,take this big bet.
(04:11):
And, I know people talk about,Zig when others act or Zig when
the world's act.
So was it that, or was it likesomething else?
and how did you.
Even, think of doing it like,Hey, I'm starting a travel
startup in 2020 when travel ishalted and convincing investors
to come and back.
You and all of it must have beendifficult.
(04:31):
So we'd love to know, more onthat.
Sarosh (04:34):
I think, one of the first things is, I've been doing
travel since, as I said, since2003 and, running a small travel
agency that kept on growing andgrowing.
And, in 2019, I realized.
That if I truly need to scalethe services business that I
have is I need to focus ontechnology, been dabbling in
technology over the last fewyears prior to that.
(04:55):
But one of the things that Irealized that was fundamentally
broken was the infrastructurethat we operated in.
So the travel as a travel agent,the tools that were available to
use were just archaic tools.
They were not cutting edge toolslike you'd have in any other
industry.
And that's where we thought ofthe disruption is that.
If you want to build this,you've got to build this new
infrastructure from ground up.
(05:16):
Yes, we started in Jan of 2020,who knew that, 30 days later,
the world would go South withCOVID, fortunately had some
amazing investors that backed usand believed in the vision that,
that had been laid out, thatreally Spotnano wants to be a
platform that can basicallybuild this brand new tech stack.
And I think one of the bigthings that made this possible
(05:37):
was cloud native architectures.
with microservices, that waspreviously not possible.
The cost to do this would be somuch more higher several years
ago.
So again, timing is important,but I think our whole focus was
how do you build out this openplatform that allows other
people to build on top of you?
How do you create this platformthat any travel seller, anyone
who wants to offer and selltravel can easily do so using
(06:01):
this entire end to end techstack?
And I think, the one thingduring COVID we realized was As
unfortunate as COVID was for theentire world, for us, it was a
blessing in disguise because allwe had to do as a company was
just focus on product, focus onbuilding.
There were no otherdistractions.
Was it hard?
It was hard at the sensorbecause it is impossible to
(06:21):
recruit people, right?
And when you tell an engineerduring COVID times, I'm starting
a travel company.
They don't care whether you'refunded or not.
You're like in travel?
I don't want to work in travel.
It's over.
And here we are four years laterand we're still building.
And I think, that was the bigchallenging is convincing people
to see that travel would comeback at least in the early days.
(06:41):
And then as we continue to scaleand as we made more progress on
the product, got customerssigned on, started believing in
what we're building.
I think then obviously itbecomes slightly easier, but I
think the biggest challengeduring COVID was, because at the
end of the day, you're only asgood as your team is, right?
The team that you built.
And, fortunately, the team thatwe built early on is still with
us that have helped build thefoundations of, the vision that
(07:03):
we've had from day one was howdo you build out this entire
tech stack and this platformthat can, offer to any other
travel center in the world.
Sunil (07:11):
Nice, nice.
That, that must have been acrazy journey, right?
just building the product and,like not doing any GTM, not
caring about like gettingcustomers and, obviously like
convincing people to.
join a travel tech startup,especially like in 2020 or
something like that youmentioned.
yeah, I'm assuming it must havebeen like a great, ride.
I was browsing a website and Isaw like an interesting thing,
(07:34):
where your website mentionedit's like travel, as a service.
it's a new category, I believethat you're creating.
And, what measures have youtaken to make sure that, Hey,
you come up as a pioneer in thecategory and, how are Working
towards this category creation,I feel like travel in industry,
they're fear technology, likemaybe not the airlines and all,
(07:55):
but the hotels were like, nobodywants to use Updated tech, and
something like that.
So how are you creating thiscategory and, being a pioneer,
leader in this category?
Sarosh (08:05):
I think firstly, there's a lot of work to be done.
And I think, people say someonecreates a category.
At the end of the day, you'reonly building something, by
standing on shoulders of giants.
There are a lot of other peoplethat have done some amazing work
prior to us.
I think, for us travel as aservice and building a platform,
there are some foundingprinciples and one of those
(08:25):
founding principles is what arethe set of services you would
build?
And if you want to be, or callyourself a platform company, the
first thing that you need torealize is.
You need to make sure thatpeople who build on your
platform as an open platformneed to be able to make more and
create more economic value thanyou will.
That's only when you can callyourself a platform, when you
(08:47):
let others build on top of you.
Our whole premise from day onewas never to become the world's
largest travel agency or thelargest OTA.
We're building this platformthat can provide the
infrastructure for someone tobuild on top of us.
if you look at the foundingprinciples of how AWS came
about, if I were to say, callJeff Bezos in this room and say,
Jeff, would you have sold books?
(09:07):
or built AWS first?
You know what the answer wouldhave been.
But history will tell you thatthey started selling books and
hundred other things and whenthey try to scale and they offer
this to other folks, their ecommerce, infrastructure, etc,
they are not able to scale.
And that is why how AWS S3 wasborn in the early days.
Obviously now it's a lot moreservices that they provide.
(09:27):
Similarly, when SpotNana startedthis journey was we built this
infrastructure and the firstcustomer happened to be
SpotNana, the travel agencyusing this infrastructure, AWS's
first customer was amazon.
com.
And some of that thinking iswhat we applied as principles
here at SpotNana.
What will we build?
And what would we stay focusedon?
(09:49):
And that's how we went abouttravel as a service.
The whole premise came about is,as I said, with cloud computing
costs going down and making thisaffordable, we had an
opportunity to build out thisinfrastructure for travel that.
You could build from ground upthat previously was not
possible.
this whole concept of youprobably heard of a PNR,
something that he used at anairport and I'm sure somewhere
(10:12):
in your life, you bought aticket and you walked up to an
airport to make a change at it.
And then the agent will tellyou, I'm sorry, you've got to
call up your travel agency andyou scratch your head.
And I just paid you the money.
It's your plane.
It's your seat.
Why are you telling me to talkto somebody else?
That is the problem that we aretrying to solve for.
How do you make sure that whenyou make a change or you
purchase something from anairline, you can make a change
(10:33):
anywhere through anybody else.
Why is that not possible todayis because there are different
systems of records.
What the agent is looking at thekiosk versus what you have on
your mobile versus what your OTAor what your travel agent book,
they don't talk to each other.
So Spotlight is trying to createthat system of record by
building this infrastructurefrom ground up and then allowing
other people to build on top ofit.
(10:54):
So you can have other developersthat can create more economic
value in time to come.
So that is what our focus is.
Why travel as a service similarto what?
Software as a service is done,you know what salesforce and all
have done applying some of thoseguiding principles on travel
because traveling in general hasbeen a very closed industry.
It's not only adoption of atechnology in general, it's just
(11:16):
been one of those legacyindustries where innovation
hasn't happened much.
And for us, truly innovation anddisruption happens is when you
create something that's open andaccessible to everybody.
And that's been something thatwe've been very focused on, for
tasks.
And how do we drive that at theend of the day?
And that's really what we'vebeen trying to build here is
like, how do you provide thistask platform that other people
(11:39):
can build on top of it andcreate more economic value at
the end of the day?
Sunil (11:43):
nice.
and, staying on, the same,aspect of category creation,
like what are some of thechallenges that you feel.
that, spot on a face or is maybefacing, in terms of when you are
creating this category, right?
when you are the pioneer, right?
obviously like a lot ofcompanies who come up, they
already.
playing in an existing category.
(12:04):
So everything is pretty muchsorted.
There's like clear boundariesand, guidelines sort of things
that exist, but in your case,like nothing exists, right?
because you are the leader oryou're creating the category.
So what are some of thechallenges that you face?
And, this is especially for.
listeners who are, operating in,nascent categories or maybe for
them, it doesn't exist at all.
(12:25):
So how can they navigate, beingin the category, how do you tell
your even customers like, Hey,what we are, right?
like positioning also.
takes a big toll where youcan't, where you cannot position
somewhere on the grid, somewhereon the Gartner, report and all
of that.
I would love to know, what arethe challenges you faced, in
general?
Sure.
Sarosh (12:44):
I think, we have a very long way to go first.
we just, we will, we feel we arebarely scratching the surface.
travel is 11 trillion industry.
Business and leisure travel.
And now this consists of yourtravel TMCs, travel management
companies that focus on businesstravel.
This consists of your OTAsaggregators and everyone else
who sells travel.
And, I think, it's such a largeaddressable market that there
(13:08):
are various players trying tosolve various problems.
I think for us creating travelas a service.
The whole premise was buildingout this platform that would be
able to address the market ingeneral.
And I think, some of the biggestchallenges have been is like,
Like any other industry, right?
People are happy the way it isbeing done, but at whose cost?
(13:29):
It's always at the cost of thecustomer or the supplier.
I think our big valueproposition from day one is how
do you bring the customer andthe supplier together, as in the
airlines and hotels and the carvendors and the rail vendors?
How do you create And giveeveryone a seat at the table,
and the only way to do that, ifyou think about it is, the
fastest path through trueinnovation, the travel industry
(13:51):
is through collaboration witheverybody, and, and by keeping
this platform open, givingeveryone a chance to build on it
and creating the value foreverybody, it was never like, At
the cost of the customer.
If you think about it, when Igave you the example of you not
being able to make a date changeor waiting for four hours to
make a simple date change orcome back three hours earlier
back from San Francisco to Puna,you have to go through so many
(14:15):
headaches.
But if you do anything else onAmazon or on any of the other e
commerce websites, on one singleclick, you can get a refund.
Why is it not like that intravel?
It's just because of so manymiddlemen and so much of this
legacy infrastructure that'sbeen built.
By solving for that problem,you're able to provide a better
experience, not only for theairline, but even for the actual
(14:37):
passenger.
When you bring everyone andsolve for everyone together, it
makes it more adaptable andcreates a better user experience
at the end of the day.
And that's really what we'vebeen focused on.
have there been challenges thatare constant challenges, right?
Because any other disruption youcreate, there are going to be
naysayers.
And there are people who justdon't want to make those
(14:58):
changes.
But at the end of the day, youtruly have to believe that what
you're doing is there is valuefor everybody.
And if you continue down thatpath, you just have to be
relentless in that pursuit.
there've been, I keep tellingpeople that, Sputner has been my
life work.
I've been doing this since, as Isaid, 2003.
That's 20 plus years with asingle vision that, if you want
(15:20):
to build travel, build foreverybody, which is why we have
this mission here.
Let's build longer tables andnot higher walls.
And the whole premise ofbuilding longer tables is let's
be inclusive.
Let's bring everyone here sothat innovation can happen
faster for everybody, not us atthe cost of somebody else.
And that is why it's veryimportant, whether you are a
product company.
Or whether you're a platformcompany, I think that's really
(15:42):
the big thing that it boils downto at the end of the day is if
you're trying to create aplatform company, you have to
realize that you can't buildeverything.
You have to let others build ontop of you to create more
economic value than you, youwould for creating for yourself.
And I think those are some toughcalls that you have to make
because sometimes in early days,you're chasing revenue, right?
And there's always a trade off.
(16:04):
You're trying to chase revenue.
Oh, let me build this one morething.
If I build this one more thing,I can make more money, but then
at what cost?
And those are just constantchallenges, not only externally,
but even as a company, as you'rescaling.
what are some of the trade offsthat you'll make?
And I think the biggest learningin all of this is, how do you
scale companies?
How do you stick true to yourprinciples and your value and
(16:26):
your belief system that this isonly what I'll do, even at the
cost of something else, becauseit's very easy when you start
getting traction early on andyou have all these customers
chasing you to get, believe thatyou can build everything.
No, you can't build everything.
And that, humbling experience.
is something that I would say isreally important, especially if
you want to build a generationalcompany.
(16:47):
If you want to build a companythat's going to outlive you and
make that kind of impact, thenyou'll have to make those
decisions today on how youbuild, how you scale.
And, I think that's been one ofthe biggest things that we've
learned as we continue to scaleSparkner.
Sunil (17:02):
nice.
I think, interesting, point youmentioned and, which, was
related to my next question aswell.
deciding between building aproduct versus, building a
platform, right?
what made you like, build AWSfor the travel industry and not,
Like amazon.
com for the travel industry,right?
building that product, evenAmazon, as you mentioned, like
they started with a product andobviously the grew that product,
(17:25):
like super, like a giant one andthen they, also explored like
building a platform.
like why build a product, versuslike, why build a platform?
And why did you choose to buildthat platform and not, the
product?
Sarosh (17:40):
I think with my previous experience that I've been in
travel and working with variousother product companies, there
were just so many people in thetech stack.
The whole premise this timearound was if you build this new
infrastructure from ground up,you can create more value at the
end of the day.
And the whole approach was onbuilding a platform and not just
a product.
Yes.
We started off first.
(18:00):
Building the product andbringing in content, bringing
inventory.
Because the first thing from atravel perspective is can I find
this cheaper?
And if I present to you all theoffers and all the best fares,
you won't shop.
So I win you on trust as atraveler or as someone who's
buying or shopping online.
First thing is to bring in allthe content, similar to Amazon,
have the best content and havethe best inventory in the world.
(18:23):
But if you think about Amazon,the profit.
Is made on the AWS side and thatis why the whole premise was
we'll build this infrastructureBut we build out this one piece
of the product as well, and overtime continue to focus on the
platform and build on top ofthat.
So there are a lot ofsimilarities and that is why we
look up to Amazon and howthey've gone about in their
(18:45):
journey.
And the decision of building aplatform versus a product was
very simple because at the endof the day, as I said, this is a
11 trillion industry.
If we can build something thatcan be used by other folks,
which is why we have severalcustomers from fortune 100
companies that are using ourplatform to some of the world's
largest travel managementcompanies using the platform to
(19:08):
some of the world's largestcredit card companies using the
platform.
this platform is for Anyone whowants to sell travel or anyone
who wants to consume travel, theimpact of that and that surface
area is much bigger, which iswhy the platform first approach
is what we want to take.
We don't want to be a travelagency at the end of the day,
right?
Because if you're an OTA oryou're any of the large travel
(19:29):
agencies, you still have to havea servicing arm, right?
Pick up the phone and servicecustomers, et cetera.
Our whole premise was, if you'rea platform first company, then
you can be tech enabled.
We give this platform to otherfolks, other agencies, other
service providers who can usethis new tech stack, reduce
their cost of operating andcreate more value for their own
customers.
So that was the approach that wetook early on is.
(19:51):
How do you build this platformthat's more horizontal than
vertical at all?
Sunil (19:56):
nice, very, interesting.
And I think that's like reallyworking out for you given, you
mentioned some of the world'sbiggest, companies of travel
are, using you.
So I think that's like success,I would say.
but.
as you mentioned, the techadoption and travel is very
poor, and, it's not as much asit is expected to be as compared
(20:17):
to some other industries.
where did, and being again, likea leader in this category, being
in this journey of categorycreation, where do you see like
the, what the future holds, fortravel tech?
what's the next big thing?
you feel like it's coming up fortravel tech, according to you.
Sarosh (20:35):
No, I've been talking of AI and if you think about it,
when, a few years ago, whenchat, GBT and all of those
things came about, I think thefirst thing was, a lot on travel
was some of the use cases thatpeople gave is how to give you
better itineraries, et cetera.
But I think the big thing withAI is intersection, especially
on travel is, please.
How do I provide you the servicein much quicker?
(20:58):
I think that is what's going tobe huge in that context.
It's not about give me anitinerary or give me something
cheaper that you can easily do.
But the ability to service youon your fingertips, not waiting
for six hours, being able tomake a change quickly, being
able to recognize your patterns,giving you exactly what you
want, when you want making thatexperience.
(21:18):
more sticky is going to be someof the, I think driving forces
in travel that will be thateveryone is going to start
seeing because as there's somuch data out there, but no one
knows what to do with it.
that's always the problem isthat it's all over the place,
folk folks that are going to bemaking an impact, especially in
travel is how are they going tobuild these LLM models and
(21:40):
create innovation on top ofthat.
And that is why our focus is.
how do you create this platformso other people can build
tomorrow on top of it, which iswhy I think, in travel, you see
a lot of data, right?
I see where you're going, whatyou do, who you meet and
everything else about yourprofile.
There's so much to capture andthere's so much value to be
created in that.
if you're traveling from SanFrancisco to Puna, what is the
(22:02):
best way to get you is onething.
Shortest flight is one thing.
Cheapest flight is one thing,but along the way.
Have you ever experienced thisat an airport?
You're constantly looking up,walking all over the place,
wondering when's your flighttaking off, which gate you need
to go to, where you're walking.
Imagine you had it in the palmof your hand every time.
You didn't have to look up.
So Neil, you're boarding now in10 minutes.
(22:23):
Walking from where you are toyour gate is going to be six
minutes.
So Neil, you have access to thelounge.
So Neil, your bags have arrivedon carousel number three.
And the first thing we do acrossimmigration is looking at some
board, figuring out where ourbags came.
And it's just crazy when youhave everything access in your
mobile.
This data is available.
It's just not being pushed out.
So it's how do you create.
Those experiences on top of whatyou have and making it seamless.
(22:47):
I think that is really where,can I say, why do I need to wait
at a hotel for 15 minutes tocheck in and give my passport
information and all of that whenyou can have all of that access
already ahead before of mearriving there.
How do I make that check inprocess more seamless?
Because someone has the data.
Someone's made a booking at ahotel.
Why can't we push all of that tomake your check in process more
seamless?
(23:07):
So even though you talk oftravel, it just has such a wide
scope of so many services thatcan be built on top of it is
just who's going to sit and dothat work at the end of the day.
Sunil (23:18):
Yeah.
good point.
That is mentioned.
I think everybody does this,right?
they book the flight and thefirst thing, like you, probably
once you land and.
You miss hearing out like whichbelt your bag is going to come.
And then you go out and look fora screen and Oh, where is the
bag?
Or you just follow the peoplewhere they're going and it's
difficult.
And I actually, I don't know ifbut I use this app called
(23:39):
flighty.
on my phone.
And, that actually like doeslike most of what you're saying
for the flights thing, at leastlike it tells me Hey, which,
which terminal that I'm taking,which gate I'm taking, what seat
I have based on.
I just send a forward my ticketto it and it'll have all the
PNR, the QR code, everythingready.
It also tells me if my flight isdelayed or early.
(24:01):
All of that jazz.
and also where is the baggagegoing to come in and stuff like
that?
So yeah, that, that's like anapp that I use.
it like, but what do you say?
Like before I was using thatapp, it was very difficult and
always not a good experienceoverall, but after using that
app, it's it's seamless, right?
it just tells me, shows me acountdown timer on, When is the
(24:22):
check in, opening?
When is the boarding gateclosing?
And, and all of that, it, it wasvery, it's very seamless.
But yeah, I feel like there'slike still a long way to go it,
yeah, the hotels, there's
Sarosh (24:32):
cars, there's rails.
in Europe, rails are such a bigthing, choosing the right seat
is so important.
People are going to travel frompoint A to point B.
We want what we want at the endof the day, right?
Yeah.
And when it comes to travel, weare extremely finicky.
We just want to get our frequentfly miles.
We want the right seat.
We want the best price.
And we want to make sure that wehave access to everything over
(24:52):
those next 12 hour journey thatwe're going to take.
And
Sunil (24:55):
we're
Sarosh (24:55):
used to that, right?
we're used to the world ofSpotify and Uber and Netflix, we
want to be able to make.
Have that kind of pleasurableexperience when it comes to
travel to, I don't want to thinkabout it.
I just want to get everythingdone and on my fingertips.
And I don't want to talk toanybody either.
I just want it all on my mobile.
If I want to talk to you, Iwill.
Otherwise, I just want to beleft alone.
really, that's how we look attravelers.
(25:16):
How do you make it seamless?
Sunil (25:17):
So one last thing before we move on to the lightning
round section, right?
you mentioned, that AI, part,And obviously everybody is in
the chat GPT thing happened.
Everybody's building on top ofit or building alongside it or
something like that.
and I use this, Amex card and Ihave a concierge.
So generally I try to makebookings so that instead of me
(25:38):
going and searching, I'll justgive them a call and, they'll
send me options and, it's easyto talk to, a person and, get
stuff done whenever I have tobook a hotel or a flight or
anything.
Right.
that on one side now, versus,having an app on your phone,
chat, GPT, like application onyour phone, where you can ask
them Hey, I want to, fly from SFto New York and, I want to leave
(25:59):
between 7am to 9am.
probably take, have a hundred,200 budget, whatever.
And it gives you flight options.
And then should I go ahead andbook?
And I say yes.
And because now it already hasmy data, has my passport number,
has my frequent flier milesnumber, all of that.
And.
You click yes.
And it goes ahead and book forme.
So that is basically like AIdriving it.
(26:20):
So how do you think that, thosetwo things are going to compare,
right?
Somebody talking to a human,versus, to get things done
versus somebody talking to, anAI to get things done.
Sarosh (26:34):
But I would like to propose to you, what if we build
those LLM models using all thedata that Amex had?
And how does Amex streamlinethat gives that same level of
knowledge and experience to youthrough a bot and an agent will
only jump in when you reallyneed the help or if you're stuck
somewhere because all thatknowledge resides with American
Express.
They've been tracking all ofthis.
(26:54):
Think about it, right?
You have the platinum card orthe black card or the gold card.
You deal with that conciergeservice.
You go to San Francisco, send memy options.
Give me my hotels.
They start recognizing that thiswould be a business trip.
If you're going for 30 days,it's not a business trip.
By default, you think about it.
You're going for five days.
it's a business trip.
You want to be in and out.
Where are your meetings at?
(27:16):
The ability to process all ofthat, turn that around quickly,
reduce the cost for AmericanExpress, but at the same time,
give you that same pleasureexperience, recognizing your
frequent flyer number and givingyou that, Hey, you're big on
Lufthansa.
Lufthansa flies three times aweek from Frankfurt to Pune.
Why should a Sunil go to Bombay?
To connect to San Francisco orto Seattle.
(27:36):
See, those are the nuances.
Where is Sunil taking off fromPune?
Does he have to take two hourride to Bombay airport and then
connect or find flight optionsthat go from Pune to Frankfurt
on the way to San Francisco, butbeing able to connect those dots
right now, an agent will neversit and figure out and break it.
and it's a back and forthbetween you and them.
What if I'm able to do that inthe palm of my hand and
(27:58):
recognize that and push outthose options to you and make
that more seamless.
And an agent would jump in asand when.
So I think that's where thatintersection of knowledge and
automation comes in.
And recognizing those patternsis where the user experience
starts becoming stickier.
And giving that to you quickly,recognizing that for you, that
when you come to San Francisco,you'd have meetings in this
(28:19):
probably in downtown, or youprobably have meetings in Palo
Alto.
You're coming to San Francisco.
That's fine.
From India, there are no flightsthat go to San Jose.
So you have to go to SanFrancisco.
It was bigger internationalairport.
But if the flight, if yourmeetings in Palo Alto.
Then you need to drive not todowntown San Francisco, you need
to go towards Palo Alto and staysomewhere there.
Being able to recognize that'swhere, if you depend on a human
(28:41):
being, and if you don't get yoursame agent again and again,
Sunil (28:44):
then you're going to be frustrated.
Sarosh (28:45):
Why am I repeating
Sunil (28:47):
myself?
Yeah.
Sarosh (28:47):
you call at two in the morning to American Express, it
might be an after hour service.
It might not be the same agentthat you talk to every day
between eight to five.
Then what?
Yeah.
That's when that experiencebreaks.
That's when you get frustrated.
Why are you asking me thisagain?
You already know that I'm goingto Palo Alto.
Sunil (29:02):
Yeah.
So
Sarosh (29:03):
I, this is what I mean, the intersection of all this
data that's already there andcaptured in your profile and
your buying habits,
Sunil (29:10):
how
Sarosh (29:10):
do I mine on that and how do I create a better user
experience and automate on topof that?
That's the whole point.
Sunil (29:16):
Yeah.
No, actually like same thinghappened with me, right?
The flight that I've booked forSF, now, like I spoke to an
agent and, and I took a week'sgap because I had to travel
somewhere.
And, like I called Amex againand I spoke to another agent and
I didn't get connected with thesame person, obviously.
So I had to explain everything.
so yeah.
That, that, that problem isthere.
And having in, AI to summarizeit for you or to aid you, to
(29:40):
save you time and efforts bothfor me and even the people at,
these, the selling traffics.
Yeah.
Yeah.
the, it helps all, all the,parties, Involved.
Awesome.
Yep.
awesome.
great chat, Saroj.
let's move on to, the lightninground.
So it's not like I've asked youlike a lot of questions already,
but three more, not related totravel, for sure, but, yeah,
let's get started.
(30:01):
So the first one, what's yourone tip for managing work life
balance?
Sarosh (30:06):
I think, that's a challenge always when you're at
a startup, but being, self awareabout that, I think that can be
a single biggest superpowerbeing present in the moment and
in doing whatever you're doing.
I think, I think that it takes adiscipline and muscle around
that.
And, being self aware thattrying to balance it out,
because if you are, you can wina marathon by being a sprinter
(30:28):
and have to remind myself ofthat, that, sometimes, we must
pause.
So we may rise.
Sunil (30:33):
Nice.
Nice.
that's really, good observation,onto the second one.
So what's the one thing that youwish you would have known when
you first started?
Sarosh (30:44):
Wow.
Uh, and I think on this, Ialways say choose your heart,
just I think work, personallife, everything.
I think if you just, think aboutit, like they say, marriage is
hard,
Sunil (30:56):
right?
Sarosh (30:57):
Divorce is harder.
Staying fit is hard, but beingunhealthy and obese.
Obesity is harder and, beingfinancially disciplined or being
in debt, you've got to chooseyour heart.
I think, the one thing that, Iwish I knew when I first started
is, just choosing your heart,just make those choices and it's
(31:19):
hard, right?
Because this is a journey, thereare no mistakes that only
experiences, you're constantlybeing able to go back and
reflect on that and, constantlytweaking that along the way.
I think that's one thing thatI've learned that is, or I'm
still learning.
Let's put it that way.
Sunil (31:34):
Nice.
Nice.
it's like you have to make theleast, worst choice.
sometimes always.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The, and the third and the lastone, so also, What's one, book
recommendation that you have forthe audience?
I
Sarosh (31:47):
think one book that I've recently read, which I've really
liked has been Indistractable byNir Eyal.
I think that, that book, I thinkhas a lot of tremendous value,
it just, makes you very selfaware too.
And I think that's just been agreat read for me at least.
Sunil (32:02):
Awesome.
Awesome.
Yeah.
I've heard of that.
I've never gotten a chance toget my hands on it, but yeah,
it's, it's a great beat forsure.
Again, thanks a lot Saroj for,taking time, sharing all these
insights, with us and, greatstuff on building a new
category, like travel as aservice.
Sarosh (32:18):
And we have a long way to go.
I'm glad we got to connectSunil.
Thank you so much.
see you soon.
Hey everyone, welcome to the latest episode of the SAS
sessions podcast.
today we have Sarosh Vagmar onthe show with us.
Sarosh has spent over twodecades in building into the
travel industry and currently isthe founder and chief product
officer at Spotnana.
So hey Sarosh, it's a pleasureto have you on the show.
Sarosh (00:26):
Thanks Salim.
Looking forward to it.
Appreciate you setting this up.
Sunil (00:30):
Awesome.
Awesome.
for people who don't knowSpotnana, it's a, they're
building like an AWS for thetravel industry.
And in this episode, we aregoing to, go into depth talking
about the same with Saroj.
I know like Saroj, I gave a veryshort intro about you.
you spend two decades intotravel tech, that's like super,
like subject matter expertisethat you must have built in the
(00:51):
industry.
So why don't you like introduceyourself in more words and.
Tell us more about you and howhas your journey been into the
SaaS ecosystem?
Sarosh (01:01):
Great.
firstly, as I said, you spenttwo decades and I still feel I
know nothing.
travel is, I always say thattravel is a human emotion.
It connects all of us.
And, at the same time, COVIDshowed us, when, the single
industry that was most affectedby COVID, as was the travel
industry.
the entire world did.
And, we never knew what wasgoing to happen, but this is one
(01:22):
of those industries that justkeeps coming back.
And, if you think about it, itconnects all of us in some way
or the other.
We need to do these things inperson.
We need to connect with each ofour fellow humans.
And I think travel is one waythat makes that possible.
talking about the travelindustry and my experience in
that, been doing this, since,2003.
And, three.
And, as you all know, that,travel is complex in the sense,
(01:45):
booking a trip is easy, butsometimes you have to wait for
six hours to make a cancellationor a refund.
It's not a click of a button asAmazon is.
when you think of someone likean Amazon, it's so easy to shop
on it.
You get everything and yourarely compare prices going to
Amazon and comparing fivedifferent websites, but I'm sure
Sunil you and everyone elselistening, when you look for
(02:06):
flights, we're comparing 10different websites.
Why?
Now that's the question I keepasking everybody is why do you
do that?
We all do that because we allbelieve there's a deal to be had
right at the end of the day, onewebsite or another or hotel
prices, and that's The singlebiggest problem that we're
trying to solve is why does onewebsite show a low fare versus
your travel agent?
And sometimes if you'retraveling with your entire
(02:28):
family, personal travel, letalone business travel, you might
go to the extent of callingpeople offline and just doing
all these crazy things just sothat you could save money.
And it's, this is just a, one ofthose things as we, as human
beings do is because There's notenough transparency on the
pricing and the whole premise ofwhat we are building today at
Spotman is how do we createtrust and transparency for this
(02:50):
industry?
how do you create this Amazonlike experience where you can
get all the offers that youwant, all the prices of all the
hotels and airlines and etcetera, et cetera, from all the
suppliers and be able to makethe best possible decision for
yourself.
And I think that is really whatwe are focused on as Spotman is
how do we build this platformand.
(03:10):
We've taken this platform firstapproach of building out this
tech stack that is challenginghow the legacy industry has been
built on top of this over thelast several years.
I think our whole focus is howdo you make this seamless and
how do you make travelaccessible to everybody at the
end of the day?
Sunil (03:28):
Nice.
Nice.
and you mentioned a good point,right?
whenever you like, at least I'mtrying to book a ticket, like
the, I know that our aggregatorsand, at this point, you are even
like looking at differentaggregators because Like you're
comparing like even aggregatorsto one another, right?
Like to find exactly.
And nobody ever said Hey, I'mready to pay for a higher price.
(03:49):
Nobody ever said that, right?
Like I'm happy to pay a higherprice.
everybody wants like deals anddiscounts and book at the lowest
cost.
But, interesting point, Saroj,you mentioned like you started.
during COVID, right?
Like exactly 2020.
And, that was the time whentravel, if anything, was the
most affected.
what made you start then?
Like specifically in like 2020,take this big bet.
(04:11):
And, I know people talk about,Zig when others act or Zig when
the world's act.
So was it that, or was it likesomething else?
and how did you.
Even, think of doing it like,Hey, I'm starting a travel
startup in 2020 when travel ishalted and convincing investors
to come and back.
You and all of it must have beendifficult.
(04:31):
So we'd love to know, more onthat.
Sarosh (04:34):
I think, one of the first things is, I've been doing
travel since, as I said, since2003 and, running a small travel
agency that kept on growing andgrowing.
And, in 2019, I realized.
That if I truly need to scalethe services business that I
have is I need to focus ontechnology, been dabbling in
technology over the last fewyears prior to that.
(04:55):
But one of the things that Irealized that was fundamentally
broken was the infrastructurethat we operated in.
So the travel as a travel agent,the tools that were available to
use were just archaic tools.
They were not cutting edge toolslike you'd have in any other
industry.
And that's where we thought ofthe disruption is that.
If you want to build this,you've got to build this new
infrastructure from ground up.
(05:16):
Yes, we started in Jan of 2020,who knew that, 30 days later,
the world would go South withCOVID, fortunately had some
amazing investors that backed usand believed in the vision that,
that had been laid out, thatreally Spotnano wants to be a
platform that can basicallybuild this brand new tech stack.
And I think one of the bigthings that made this possible
(05:37):
was cloud native architectures.
with microservices, that waspreviously not possible.
The cost to do this would be somuch more higher several years
ago.
So again, timing is important,but I think our whole focus was
how do you build out this openplatform that allows other
people to build on top of you?
How do you create this platformthat any travel seller, anyone
who wants to offer and selltravel can easily do so using
(06:01):
this entire end to end techstack?
And I think, the one thingduring COVID we realized was As
unfortunate as COVID was for theentire world, for us, it was a
blessing in disguise because allwe had to do as a company was
just focus on product, focus onbuilding.
There were no otherdistractions.
Was it hard?
It was hard at the sensorbecause it is impossible to
(06:21):
recruit people, right?
And when you tell an engineerduring COVID times, I'm starting
a travel company.
They don't care whether you'refunded or not.
You're like in travel?
I don't want to work in travel.
It's over.
And here we are four years laterand we're still building.
And I think, that was the bigchallenging is convincing people
to see that travel would comeback at least in the early days.
(06:41):
And then as we continue to scaleand as we made more progress on
the product, got customerssigned on, started believing in
what we're building.
I think then obviously itbecomes slightly easier, but I
think the biggest challengeduring COVID was, because at the
end of the day, you're only asgood as your team is, right?
The team that you built.
And, fortunately, the team thatwe built early on is still with
us that have helped build thefoundations of, the vision that
(07:03):
we've had from day one was howdo you build out this entire
tech stack and this platformthat can, offer to any other
travel center in the world.
Sunil (07:11):
Nice, nice.
That, that must have been acrazy journey, right?
just building the product and,like not doing any GTM, not
caring about like gettingcustomers and, obviously like
convincing people to.
join a travel tech startup,especially like in 2020 or
something like that youmentioned.
yeah, I'm assuming it must havebeen like a great, ride.
I was browsing a website and Isaw like an interesting thing,
(07:34):
where your website mentionedit's like travel, as a service.
it's a new category, I believethat you're creating.
And, what measures have youtaken to make sure that, Hey,
you come up as a pioneer in thecategory and, how are Working
towards this category creation,I feel like travel in industry,
they're fear technology, likemaybe not the airlines and all,
(07:55):
but the hotels were like, nobodywants to use Updated tech, and
something like that.
So how are you creating thiscategory and, being a pioneer,
leader in this category?
Sarosh (08:05):
I think firstly, there's a lot of work to be done.
And I think, people say someonecreates a category.
At the end of the day, you'reonly building something, by
standing on shoulders of giants.
There are a lot of other peoplethat have done some amazing work
prior to us.
I think, for us travel as aservice and building a platform,
there are some foundingprinciples and one of those
(08:25):
founding principles is what arethe set of services you would
build?
And if you want to be, or callyourself a platform company, the
first thing that you need torealize is.
You need to make sure thatpeople who build on your
platform as an open platformneed to be able to make more and
create more economic value thanyou will.
That's only when you can callyourself a platform, when you
(08:47):
let others build on top of you.
Our whole premise from day onewas never to become the world's
largest travel agency or thelargest OTA.
We're building this platformthat can provide the
infrastructure for someone tobuild on top of us.
if you look at the foundingprinciples of how AWS came
about, if I were to say, callJeff Bezos in this room and say,
Jeff, would you have sold books?
(09:07):
or built AWS first?
You know what the answer wouldhave been.
But history will tell you thatthey started selling books and
hundred other things and whenthey try to scale and they offer
this to other folks, their ecommerce, infrastructure, etc,
they are not able to scale.
And that is why how AWS S3 wasborn in the early days.
Obviously now it's a lot moreservices that they provide.
(09:27):
Similarly, when SpotNana startedthis journey was we built this
infrastructure and the firstcustomer happened to be
SpotNana, the travel agencyusing this infrastructure, AWS's
first customer was amazon.
com.
And some of that thinking iswhat we applied as principles
here at SpotNana.
What will we build?
And what would we stay focusedon?
(09:49):
And that's how we went abouttravel as a service.
The whole premise came about is,as I said, with cloud computing
costs going down and making thisaffordable, we had an
opportunity to build out thisinfrastructure for travel that.
You could build from ground upthat previously was not
possible.
this whole concept of youprobably heard of a PNR,
something that he used at anairport and I'm sure somewhere
(10:12):
in your life, you bought aticket and you walked up to an
airport to make a change at it.
And then the agent will tellyou, I'm sorry, you've got to
call up your travel agency andyou scratch your head.
And I just paid you the money.
It's your plane.
It's your seat.
Why are you telling me to talkto somebody else?
That is the problem that we aretrying to solve for.
How do you make sure that whenyou make a change or you
purchase something from anairline, you can make a change
(10:33):
anywhere through anybody else.
Why is that not possible todayis because there are different
systems of records.
What the agent is looking at thekiosk versus what you have on
your mobile versus what your OTAor what your travel agent book,
they don't talk to each other.
So Spotlight is trying to createthat system of record by
building this infrastructurefrom ground up and then allowing
other people to build on top ofit.
(10:54):
So you can have other developersthat can create more economic
value in time to come.
So that is what our focus is.
Why travel as a service similarto what?
Software as a service is done,you know what salesforce and all
have done applying some of thoseguiding principles on travel
because traveling in general hasbeen a very closed industry.
It's not only adoption of atechnology in general, it's just
(11:16):
been one of those legacyindustries where innovation
hasn't happened much.
And for us, truly innovation anddisruption happens is when you
create something that's open andaccessible to everybody.
And that's been something thatwe've been very focused on, for
tasks.
And how do we drive that at theend of the day?
And that's really what we'vebeen trying to build here is
like, how do you provide thistask platform that other people
(11:39):
can build on top of it andcreate more economic value at
the end of the day?
Sunil (11:43):
nice.
and, staying on, the same,aspect of category creation,
like what are some of thechallenges that you feel.
that, spot on a face or is maybefacing, in terms of when you are
creating this category, right?
when you are the pioneer, right?
obviously like a lot ofcompanies who come up, they
already.
playing in an existing category.
(12:04):
So everything is pretty muchsorted.
There's like clear boundariesand, guidelines sort of things
that exist, but in your case,like nothing exists, right?
because you are the leader oryou're creating the category.
So what are some of thechallenges that you face?
And, this is especially for.
listeners who are, operating in,nascent categories or maybe for
them, it doesn't exist at all.
(12:25):
So how can they navigate, beingin the category, how do you tell
your even customers like, Hey,what we are, right?
like positioning also.
takes a big toll where youcan't, where you cannot position
somewhere on the grid, somewhereon the Gartner, report and all
of that.
I would love to know, what arethe challenges you faced, in
general?
Sure.
Sarosh (12:44):
I think, we have a very long way to go first.
we just, we will, we feel we arebarely scratching the surface.
travel is 11 trillion industry.
Business and leisure travel.
And now this consists of yourtravel TMCs, travel management
companies that focus on businesstravel.
This consists of your OTAsaggregators and everyone else
who sells travel.
And, I think, it's such a largeaddressable market that there
(13:08):
are various players trying tosolve various problems.
I think for us creating travelas a service.
The whole premise was buildingout this platform that would be
able to address the market ingeneral.
And I think, some of the biggestchallenges have been is like,
Like any other industry, right?
People are happy the way it isbeing done, but at whose cost?
(13:29):
It's always at the cost of thecustomer or the supplier.
I think our big valueproposition from day one is how
do you bring the customer andthe supplier together, as in the
airlines and hotels and the carvendors and the rail vendors?
How do you create And giveeveryone a seat at the table,
and the only way to do that, ifyou think about it is, the
fastest path through trueinnovation, the travel industry
(13:51):
is through collaboration witheverybody, and, and by keeping
this platform open, givingeveryone a chance to build on it
and creating the value foreverybody, it was never like, At
the cost of the customer.
If you think about it, when Igave you the example of you not
being able to make a date changeor waiting for four hours to
make a simple date change orcome back three hours earlier
back from San Francisco to Puna,you have to go through so many
(14:15):
headaches.
But if you do anything else onAmazon or on any of the other e
commerce websites, on one singleclick, you can get a refund.
Why is it not like that intravel?
It's just because of so manymiddlemen and so much of this
legacy infrastructure that'sbeen built.
By solving for that problem,you're able to provide a better
experience, not only for theairline, but even for the actual
(14:37):
passenger.
When you bring everyone andsolve for everyone together, it
makes it more adaptable andcreates a better user experience
at the end of the day.
And that's really what we'vebeen focused on.
have there been challenges thatare constant challenges, right?
Because any other disruption youcreate, there are going to be
naysayers.
And there are people who justdon't want to make those
(14:58):
changes.
But at the end of the day, youtruly have to believe that what
you're doing is there is valuefor everybody.
And if you continue down thatpath, you just have to be
relentless in that pursuit.
there've been, I keep tellingpeople that, Sputner has been my
life work.
I've been doing this since, as Isaid, 2003.
That's 20 plus years with asingle vision that, if you want
(15:20):
to build travel, build foreverybody, which is why we have
this mission here.
Let's build longer tables andnot higher walls.
And the whole premise ofbuilding longer tables is let's
be inclusive.
Let's bring everyone here sothat innovation can happen
faster for everybody, not us atthe cost of somebody else.
And that is why it's veryimportant, whether you are a
product company.
Or whether you're a platformcompany, I think that's really
(15:42):
the big thing that it boils downto at the end of the day is if
you're trying to create aplatform company, you have to
realize that you can't buildeverything.
You have to let others build ontop of you to create more
economic value than you, youwould for creating for yourself.
And I think those are some toughcalls that you have to make
because sometimes in early days,you're chasing revenue, right?
And there's always a trade off.
(16:04):
You're trying to chase revenue.
Oh, let me build this one morething.
If I build this one more thing,I can make more money, but then
at what cost?
And those are just constantchallenges, not only externally,
but even as a company, as you'rescaling.
what are some of the trade offsthat you'll make?
And I think the biggest learningin all of this is, how do you
scale companies?
How do you stick true to yourprinciples and your value and
(16:26):
your belief system that this isonly what I'll do, even at the
cost of something else, becauseit's very easy when you start
getting traction early on andyou have all these customers
chasing you to get, believe thatyou can build everything.
No, you can't build everything.
And that, humbling experience.
is something that I would say isreally important, especially if
you want to build a generationalcompany.
(16:47):
If you want to build a companythat's going to outlive you and
make that kind of impact, thenyou'll have to make those
decisions today on how youbuild, how you scale.
And, I think that's been one ofthe biggest things that we've
learned as we continue to scaleSparkner.
Sunil (17:02):
nice.
I think, interesting, point youmentioned and, which, was
related to my next question aswell.
deciding between building aproduct versus, building a
platform, right?
what made you like, build AWSfor the travel industry and not,
Like amazon.
com for the travel industry,right?
building that product, evenAmazon, as you mentioned, like
they started with a product andobviously the grew that product,
(17:25):
like super, like a giant one andthen they, also explored like
building a platform.
like why build a product, versuslike, why build a platform?
And why did you choose to buildthat platform and not, the
product?
Sarosh (17:40):
I think with my previous experience that I've been in
travel and working with variousother product companies, there
were just so many people in thetech stack.
The whole premise this timearound was if you build this new
infrastructure from ground up,you can create more value at the
end of the day.
And the whole approach was onbuilding a platform and not just
a product.
Yes.
We started off first.
(18:00):
Building the product andbringing in content, bringing
inventory.
Because the first thing from atravel perspective is can I find
this cheaper?
And if I present to you all theoffers and all the best fares,
you won't shop.
So I win you on trust as atraveler or as someone who's
buying or shopping online.
First thing is to bring in allthe content, similar to Amazon,
have the best content and havethe best inventory in the world.
(18:23):
But if you think about Amazon,the profit.
Is made on the AWS side and thatis why the whole premise was
we'll build this infrastructureBut we build out this one piece
of the product as well, and overtime continue to focus on the
platform and build on top ofthat.
So there are a lot ofsimilarities and that is why we
look up to Amazon and howthey've gone about in their
(18:45):
journey.
And the decision of building aplatform versus a product was
very simple because at the endof the day, as I said, this is a
11 trillion industry.
If we can build something thatcan be used by other folks,
which is why we have severalcustomers from fortune 100
companies that are using ourplatform to some of the world's
largest travel managementcompanies using the platform to
(19:08):
some of the world's largestcredit card companies using the
platform.
this platform is for Anyone whowants to sell travel or anyone
who wants to consume travel, theimpact of that and that surface
area is much bigger, which iswhy the platform first approach
is what we want to take.
We don't want to be a travelagency at the end of the day,
right?
Because if you're an OTA oryou're any of the large travel
(19:29):
agencies, you still have to havea servicing arm, right?
Pick up the phone and servicecustomers, et cetera.
Our whole premise was, if you'rea platform first company, then
you can be tech enabled.
We give this platform to otherfolks, other agencies, other
service providers who can usethis new tech stack, reduce
their cost of operating andcreate more value for their own
customers.
So that was the approach that wetook early on is.
(19:51):
How do you build this platformthat's more horizontal than
vertical at all?
Sunil (19:56):
nice, very, interesting.
And I think that's like reallyworking out for you given, you
mentioned some of the world'sbiggest, companies of travel
are, using you.
So I think that's like success,I would say.
but.
as you mentioned, the techadoption and travel is very
poor, and, it's not as much asit is expected to be as compared
(20:17):
to some other industries.
where did, and being again, likea leader in this category, being
in this journey of categorycreation, where do you see like
the, what the future holds, fortravel tech?
what's the next big thing?
you feel like it's coming up fortravel tech, according to you.
Sarosh (20:35):
No, I've been talking of AI and if you think about it,
when, a few years ago, whenchat, GBT and all of those
things came about, I think thefirst thing was, a lot on travel
was some of the use cases thatpeople gave is how to give you
better itineraries, et cetera.
But I think the big thing withAI is intersection, especially
on travel is, please.
How do I provide you the servicein much quicker?
(20:58):
I think that is what's going tobe huge in that context.
It's not about give me anitinerary or give me something
cheaper that you can easily do.
But the ability to service youon your fingertips, not waiting
for six hours, being able tomake a change quickly, being
able to recognize your patterns,giving you exactly what you
want, when you want making thatexperience.
(21:18):
more sticky is going to be someof the, I think driving forces
in travel that will be thateveryone is going to start
seeing because as there's somuch data out there, but no one
knows what to do with it.
that's always the problem isthat it's all over the place,
folk folks that are going to bemaking an impact, especially in
travel is how are they going tobuild these LLM models and
(21:40):
create innovation on top ofthat.
And that is why our focus is.
how do you create this platformso other people can build
tomorrow on top of it, which iswhy I think, in travel, you see
a lot of data, right?
I see where you're going, whatyou do, who you meet and
everything else about yourprofile.
There's so much to capture andthere's so much value to be
created in that.
if you're traveling from SanFrancisco to Puna, what is the
(22:02):
best way to get you is onething.
Shortest flight is one thing.
Cheapest flight is one thing,but along the way.
Have you ever experienced thisat an airport?
You're constantly looking up,walking all over the place,
wondering when's your flighttaking off, which gate you need
to go to, where you're walking.
Imagine you had it in the palmof your hand every time.
You didn't have to look up.
So Neil, you're boarding now in10 minutes.
(22:23):
Walking from where you are toyour gate is going to be six
minutes.
So Neil, you have access to thelounge.
So Neil, your bags have arrivedon carousel number three.
And the first thing we do acrossimmigration is looking at some
board, figuring out where ourbags came.
And it's just crazy when youhave everything access in your
mobile.
This data is available.
It's just not being pushed out.
So it's how do you create.
Those experiences on top of whatyou have and making it seamless.
(22:47):
I think that is really where,can I say, why do I need to wait
at a hotel for 15 minutes tocheck in and give my passport
information and all of that whenyou can have all of that access
already ahead before of mearriving there.
How do I make that check inprocess more seamless?
Because someone has the data.
Someone's made a booking at ahotel.
Why can't we push all of that tomake your check in process more
seamless?
(23:07):
So even though you talk oftravel, it just has such a wide
scope of so many services thatcan be built on top of it is
just who's going to sit and dothat work at the end of the day.
Sunil (23:18):
Yeah.
good point.
That is mentioned.
I think everybody does this,right?
they book the flight and thefirst thing, like you, probably
once you land and.
You miss hearing out like whichbelt your bag is going to come.
And then you go out and look fora screen and Oh, where is the
bag?
Or you just follow the peoplewhere they're going and it's
difficult.
And I actually, I don't know ifbut I use this app called
(23:39):
flighty.
on my phone.
And, that actually like doeslike most of what you're saying
for the flights thing, at leastlike it tells me Hey, which,
which terminal that I'm taking,which gate I'm taking, what seat
I have based on.
I just send a forward my ticketto it and it'll have all the
PNR, the QR code, everythingready.
It also tells me if my flight isdelayed or early.
(24:01):
All of that jazz.
and also where is the baggagegoing to come in and stuff like
that?
So yeah, that, that's like anapp that I use.
it like, but what do you say?
Like before I was using thatapp, it was very difficult and
always not a good experienceoverall, but after using that
app, it's it's seamless, right?
it just tells me, shows me acountdown timer on, When is the
(24:22):
check in, opening?
When is the boarding gateclosing?
And, and all of that, it, it wasvery, it's very seamless.
But yeah, I feel like there'slike still a long way to go it,
yeah, the hotels, there's
Sarosh (24:32):
cars, there's rails.
in Europe, rails are such a bigthing, choosing the right seat
is so important.
People are going to travel frompoint A to point B.
We want what we want at the endof the day, right?
Yeah.
And when it comes to travel, weare extremely finicky.
We just want to get our frequentfly miles.
We want the right seat.
We want the best price.
And we want to make sure that wehave access to everything over
(24:52):
those next 12 hour journey thatwe're going to take.
And
Sunil (24:55):
we're
Sarosh (24:55):
used to that, right?
we're used to the world ofSpotify and Uber and Netflix, we
want to be able to make.
Have that kind of pleasurableexperience when it comes to
travel to, I don't want to thinkabout it.
I just want to get everythingdone and on my fingertips.
And I don't want to talk toanybody either.
I just want it all on my mobile.
If I want to talk to you, Iwill.
Otherwise, I just want to beleft alone.
really, that's how we look attravelers.
(25:16):
How do you make it seamless?
Sunil (25:17):
So one last thing before we move on to the lightning
round section, right?
you mentioned, that AI, part,And obviously everybody is in
the chat GPT thing happened.
Everybody's building on top ofit or building alongside it or
something like that.
and I use this, Amex card and Ihave a concierge.
So generally I try to makebookings so that instead of me
(25:38):
going and searching, I'll justgive them a call and, they'll
send me options and, it's easyto talk to, a person and, get
stuff done whenever I have tobook a hotel or a flight or
anything.
Right.
that on one side now, versus,having an app on your phone,
chat, GPT, like application onyour phone, where you can ask
them Hey, I want to, fly from SFto New York and, I want to leave
(25:59):
between 7am to 9am.
probably take, have a hundred,200 budget, whatever.
And it gives you flight options.
And then should I go ahead andbook?
And I say yes.
And because now it already hasmy data, has my passport number,
has my frequent flier milesnumber, all of that.
And.
You click yes.
And it goes ahead and book forme.
So that is basically like AIdriving it.
(26:20):
So how do you think that, thosetwo things are going to compare,
right?
Somebody talking to a human,versus, to get things done
versus somebody talking to, anAI to get things done.
Sarosh (26:34):
But I would like to propose to you, what if we build
those LLM models using all thedata that Amex had?
And how does Amex streamlinethat gives that same level of
knowledge and experience to youthrough a bot and an agent will
only jump in when you reallyneed the help or if you're stuck
somewhere because all thatknowledge resides with American
Express.
They've been tracking all ofthis.
(26:54):
Think about it, right?
You have the platinum card orthe black card or the gold card.
You deal with that conciergeservice.
You go to San Francisco, send memy options.
Give me my hotels.
They start recognizing that thiswould be a business trip.
If you're going for 30 days,it's not a business trip.
By default, you think about it.
You're going for five days.
it's a business trip.
You want to be in and out.
Where are your meetings at?
(27:16):
The ability to process all ofthat, turn that around quickly,
reduce the cost for AmericanExpress, but at the same time,
give you that same pleasureexperience, recognizing your
frequent flyer number and givingyou that, Hey, you're big on
Lufthansa.
Lufthansa flies three times aweek from Frankfurt to Pune.
Why should a Sunil go to Bombay?
To connect to San Francisco orto Seattle.
(27:36):
See, those are the nuances.
Where is Sunil taking off fromPune?
Does he have to take two hourride to Bombay airport and then
connect or find flight optionsthat go from Pune to Frankfurt
on the way to San Francisco, butbeing able to connect those dots
right now, an agent will neversit and figure out and break it.
and it's a back and forthbetween you and them.
What if I'm able to do that inthe palm of my hand and
(27:58):
recognize that and push outthose options to you and make
that more seamless.
And an agent would jump in asand when.
So I think that's where thatintersection of knowledge and
automation comes in.
And recognizing those patternsis where the user experience
starts becoming stickier.
And giving that to you quickly,recognizing that for you, that
when you come to San Francisco,you'd have meetings in this
(28:19):
probably in downtown, or youprobably have meetings in Palo
Alto.
You're coming to San Francisco.
That's fine.
From India, there are no flightsthat go to San Jose.
So you have to go to SanFrancisco.
It was bigger internationalairport.
But if the flight, if yourmeetings in Palo Alto.
Then you need to drive not todowntown San Francisco, you need
to go towards Palo Alto and staysomewhere there.
Being able to recognize that'swhere, if you depend on a human
(28:41):
being, and if you don't get yoursame agent again and again,
Sunil (28:44):
then you're going to be frustrated.
Sarosh (28:45):
Why am I repeating
Sunil (28:47):
myself?
Yeah.
Sarosh (28:47):
you call at two in the morning to American Express, it
might be an after hour service.
It might not be the same agentthat you talk to every day
between eight to five.
Then what?
Yeah.
That's when that experiencebreaks.
That's when you get frustrated.
Why are you asking me thisagain?
You already know that I'm goingto Palo Alto.
Sunil (29:02):
Yeah.
So
Sarosh (29:03):
I, this is what I mean, the intersection of all this
data that's already there andcaptured in your profile and
your buying habits,
Sunil (29:10):
how
Sarosh (29:10):
do I mine on that and how do I create a better user
experience and automate on topof that?
That's the whole point.
Sunil (29:16):
Yeah.
No, actually like same thinghappened with me, right?
The flight that I've booked forSF, now, like I spoke to an
agent and, and I took a week'sgap because I had to travel
somewhere.
And, like I called Amex againand I spoke to another agent and
I didn't get connected with thesame person, obviously.
So I had to explain everything.
so yeah.
That, that, that problem isthere.
And having in, AI to summarizeit for you or to aid you, to
(29:40):
save you time and efforts bothfor me and even the people at,
these, the selling traffics.
Yeah.
Yeah.
the, it helps all, all the,parties, Involved.
Awesome.
Yep.
awesome.
great chat, Saroj.
let's move on to, the lightninground.
So it's not like I've asked youlike a lot of questions already,
but three more, not related totravel, for sure, but, yeah,
let's get started.
(30:01):
So the first one, what's yourone tip for managing work life
balance?
Sarosh (30:06):
I think, that's a challenge always when you're at
a startup, but being, self awareabout that, I think that can be
a single biggest superpowerbeing present in the moment and
in doing whatever you're doing.
I think, I think that it takes adiscipline and muscle around
that.
And, being self aware thattrying to balance it out,
because if you are, you can wina marathon by being a sprinter
(30:28):
and have to remind myself ofthat, that, sometimes, we must
pause.
So we may rise.
Sunil (30:33):
Nice.
Nice.
that's really, good observation,onto the second one.
So what's the one thing that youwish you would have known when
you first started?
Sarosh (30:44):
Wow.
Uh, and I think on this, Ialways say choose your heart,
just I think work, personallife, everything.
I think if you just, think aboutit, like they say, marriage is
hard,
Sunil (30:56):
right?
Sarosh (30:57):
Divorce is harder.
Staying fit is hard, but beingunhealthy and obese.
Obesity is harder and, beingfinancially disciplined or being
in debt, you've got to chooseyour heart.
I think, the one thing that, Iwish I knew when I first started
is, just choosing your heart,just make those choices and it's
(31:19):
hard, right?
Because this is a journey, thereare no mistakes that only
experiences, you're constantlybeing able to go back and
reflect on that and, constantlytweaking that along the way.
I think that's one thing thatI've learned that is, or I'm
still learning.
Let's put it that way.
Sunil (31:34):
Nice.
Nice.
it's like you have to make theleast, worst choice.
sometimes always.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The, and the third and the lastone, so also, What's one, book
recommendation that you have forthe audience?
I
Sarosh (31:47):
think one book that I've recently read, which I've really
liked has been Indistractable byNir Eyal.
I think that, that book, I thinkhas a lot of tremendous value,
it just, makes you very selfaware too.
And I think that's just been agreat read for me at least.
Sunil (32:02):
Awesome.
Awesome.
Yeah.
I've heard of that.
I've never gotten a chance toget my hands on it, but yeah,
it's, it's a great beat forsure.
Again, thanks a lot Saroj for,taking time, sharing all these
insights, with us and, greatstuff on building a new
category, like travel as aservice.
Sarosh (32:18):
And we have a long way to go.
I'm glad we got to connectSunil.
Thank you so much.
see you soon.
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