What makes you click...

When I thought about this heading for the first time, the instant reaction was whether I was going to write about online advertising and digital marketing since that takes the better half of my time and pays the bills. Unfortunately for my CEO and fortunately for the non digital guys out there, this is no way connected to an ad, a click or even a sale but a look at why each one of us does what we do.

Most of the older generation who are now comfortable in their 50s-60s and blare advice to anyone with a ear, their working life was always about doing the 9 to 5 routine and coming back to a home with a family that was more interested in when the next bonus was coming than knowing if the person was actually happy doing what he/she did. I would not really blame them because change 30 years ago was more of a social suicide than a personal endeavor.

Thankfully things now are different for many of us if not most and choices are a factor of personal opinions and not inertia of the past. It’s very important to ask yourself what makes you happy and what you want to do, than following a set pattern. While most businessmen, self-help books and self-obsessed pseudo successful people claim to have done what they felt was right, many of us are still hesitant to take that plunge into the abyss and try to open a parachute on the way. Failure seems to be a taboo and success an immediate validation while the contrary would probably help you more in the long run. It’s always better to know what not to do, than to hit gold the first time though am sure Midas would beg to differ.

Reach out, un-shackle yourself and take that huge leap of faith because finally as Baz Luhrmann said, ‘the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.’ So wake up tomorrow and see what makes you click!

Krishna Iyer
twitter: @thetantrik
Team iXiGO
twitter: @iXiGOrocks

Why CFOs love iXiGO.com

In these times of flat top lines and receding bottom lines, cost cutting is an imperative from which no CFO can shy away. Some key findings according to a recent survey conducted by CFO Research Services in collaboration with Amadeus and research carried out by Effective Travel Management:

• Around 50% of the CFOs / finance professionals interviewed for the respondents believe that booking directly on Airline / Hotel websites offers significant (medium to high) opportunity to save costs. (Source: Cost Control and Beyond)
• A major proportion of respondents feel that effective feedback tools save costs (25%) and improve operational efficiency (17%) (Source: Cost Control and Beyond)
• It is possible to enjoy cost savings of ~10% just through Advance Air Booking (5.7%) and booking Restricted Fares (4.8%)* (Source: Effective Travel Management)

* Note: As restricted fares are typically available in advance, there is a 1.5% overlap in savings from improved performance in these two areas.

iXiGO.com offers several tangible benefits to the CFO looking to keep costs in check:

• Book Direct – iXiGO.com searches directly on the airline sites. It also provides access to the world’s largest inventory of hotels, offering the greatest option to users while displaying fares from various booking sites (including direct hotel sites).
• Reduce Costs through “Visual Guilt” (Price Comparison) – It is a well researched fact that when people are presented with options and shown visually that they can get the same product for substantially less, they feel compelled to do the right thing (i.e. buy at the lowest price). iXiGO.com allows travelers to search and compare the same property across different vendors, thereby ensuring the lowest possible cost to the firm.

• Leverage Feedback of the Crowd – iXiGO.com searches multiple travel review sites, providing “Do-It-Yourself” (DIY) professionals a single window access to the wisdom of the crowd.

• Plan Ahead (Advance Air Bookings) – iXiGO.com’s fare outlook graph allows the business traveler to save costs by planning ahead.
  

• Search Lowest Business (or Economy) Fares – iXiGO.com enables the harried business traveler strike the ideal balance between cost and comfort by providing the flexibility to search both Business as well as Economy class fares across all airlines.
  
• Search Fare Trend on Preferred Supplier – Definitely a boon for the “DIY” traveler who can now view the next 30 days’ Fare Outlook for all airlines on their frequently flown sector(s).

• Monitor Fare Trend on Most Frequented Sectors – iXiGO.com makes it easy to monitor fare trends by "pushing" them to the busy professional's Desktop or Web based RSS Reader.

• Rail as a Viable Alternative – Super fast search allows the cost conscious traveler to easily identify the routes where rail becomes a viable alternative to air.

Smart CFOs understand that all travel portals are NOT equal - booking through Online Travel Agents (OTA) adds an extra layer of cost and makes true price discovery impossible due to opaque pricing strategies followed by the OTAs. It is also easier to make last minute bookings and modifications while dealing directly with the airlines. Most OTAs have a blackout period, hence in many cases flights which are displayed on airlines' site - as well as on iXiGO.com, may not even get displayed on the OTA!

We guess these are reasons enough for smart corporate users from firms as diverse as Puma, Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, ITC, L&T, Ranbaxy (and more...) to patronize iXiGO.com! :-)

We got a new office!

We offer flights and now hotels and guess what? We just don't have space to sit to contain our excitement. So, after a year at our 9th floor location, we have out grown our little home and we moved to a fantastic new premise 6 floors down.

We are moving into the third floor of Galleria Towers in Gurgaon. This is the second time we are moving and a lot of us are very excited too about our new home. We have decided that once we move that we are going to make a fresh start. We have an awesome LCD Screen that shows all the latest searches being held, a new coffee machine that keeps all of us alive and a huge conference room where we discuss the best to offer you guys.

We were so excited by the shift and you can see it shows in all the pictures we took. And we want you to check it out and relive the joy by clicking this link below. And guess what we would love to have you join our team too, check out our career page for more info on that.

4500+ hotels now in offering!

We had flights covered. No one could give you search better and faster than us, without beating around the bush it was information, lean and mean and latest as the scene. Now we have got more to give? Can't believe it? What if we told you besides Flights you can also find out where you want to stay in a city you might know, in a destination you had never gone before too? That's right. Hotels are now in the offering.

And 4500 of them! We are really excited to launch our hotel search and if you can't wait to test it, head on right now to iXiGO hotels

The hotel search engine gives us loads of cool stuff to check out too. Prices for stay, Star ratings (we recommend the 5), amenties (such as swimming pools or bars) and detailed maps and photos! All of this in just one page! Truly fantastic and we are excited to offer it to you. Where would you like your Martini shaken not stirred?

Head on to Hotel search on iXiGO!

Now searching hotels on iXiGO !

Whew ! If you were wondering what us iXiGems have been upto, your wait is finally over.

iXiGO hotel search has arrived. Continuing our pathbreaking innovations in comprehensiveness and speed, iXiGO has launched India's biggest hotel search engine, aggregating over 4500 hotels in 320 cities from over 30 hotel booking sites in India and abroad, including budget hotels and hostels that can be booked in real-time. Our hotel search packs some powerful features never seen before on hotel search sites. For example:


1) You've been pulling out your hair over painfully slow hotel search results? iXiGO's new hyperthreaded search results delivery ensures a faster, smoother hotel search experience.



2) Ever felt irritated by multiple pop up windows opened by other travel portals? On iXiGO, you can view details, pictures, maps, prices for hotels seamlessly, without opening a new window.



3) How many times did you want to find a particular brand of hotel within results or look at hotels in the vicinity of your conference? iXiGO launches the world's first freeword text search within the hotel results, allowing you to narrow down by locality or name of the hotel.



We look forward to your comments and suggestions as usual and hope you love our hotel search just like you loved our flight search.

Happy stays,
The iXiGO team

Official announcement of first round of funding

We are happy to formally anounce that iXiGO.com, India's most awarded travel search engine, has received an undisclosed sum of first-round financing from BAF Spectrum Pte Ltd, a leading Singapore-based investment firm. The investment will fund iXiGO's aggressive marketing plans and its innovative strategy to scale-up searchable travel content. Mr. William Klippgen, Executive Director at BAF Spectrum, considered one of the most successful internet pioneers in Europe, is joining iXiGO's board of directors.

iXiGO's rapid growth is a direct result of its disruptive model that allows travelers to search and book directly on airline sites, saving them time and money while reducing distribution costs for airlines. A comprehensive study conducted by the firm discovered that more than 80% of the time, big online travel portals sell tickets at a higher price than the airline's own website. The study also confirmed iXiGO's ability to discover more route combinations between smaller towns like Guwahati – Hyderabad or Bangalore – Ranchi.

"Online travel purchases are driving the expansion of e-commerce in India. With an increasing number of online travel vendors, a comprehensive and transparent search engine is becoming a strong need for value-conscious Indian travelers. We were impressed by iXiGO's unique technology, strong organic growth and its passionate team's seasoned understanding of the space. We strongly believe that iXiGO's approach to online travel will become the dominant model very soon", commented Mr. Klippgen. Mr. Klippgen co-founded Zoomit.com which merged with Kelkoo to form Europe's leading price-comparison mega-portal. Kelkoo was acquired by Yahoo! in 2004 for more than US $550 million.

"Travel search is the future. BAF Spectrum shares our philosophy and brings a wealth of skills, resources, and experience to iXiGO. We are betting big on hotels to power the next phase of our growth and this relationship will assist us in our rapid brand-building efforts across India", said Mr. Aloke Bajpai, Founder & CEO of iXiGO. Launched in June 2007, iXiGO has been named as one of the most innovative startups in the world by Red Herring magazine and NASSCOM.


ABOUT iXiGO.com:

iXiGO.com ® is India's leading online and mobile travel search engine based out of Gurgaon. Launched in June 2007, iXiGO has been recognized by various national and international awards for its unique market approach, product usability, and passionate management team. iXiGO is driven by an entrepreneurial team of young IITians and INSEAD MBAs. For more information about iXiGO please visit http://www.ixigo.com/ .

About BAF Spectrum Pte Ltd:

BAF Spectrum invests in fast-growing and highly scalable Asian companies with a world market potential. The Singapore-based fund has committed more than US $14 million for early-stage ventures; partly financed through the Business Angel Scheme (BAF) operated by SPRING SEEDS Capital, a government-linked agency. Spectrum's seven executive directors from Asia and Europe represent an unusually wide cross-section of business experience. For more information about BAF Spectrum and director profiles, visit http://www.bafspectrum.com/