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Name: Pooja Gupta
Business: Tripscam
Location: Gurgaon, India
Industry: Travel, Hospitality & Events
Reason for starting? A lack of credible information has been plaguing the travel industry, leading to issues like travel scams and safety concerns for women. I have been a travel blogger at Traveljots.com for over 4 years and personally experienced the problem. While traveling in Kashmir in May 2016, I was cheated by a houseboat travel agent. I purchased tripscam.com from the houseboat itself and resolved to solve the problem of travel scams by bringing honest, trustworthy and credible information on tourist destinations. I felt a neutral platform for travelers to read and share travel tips would be helpful in solving this problem.
Related: Read about another travel site entrepreneur here.
How do you define success? Success is the achievement of goals. In my case, I set goals for myself and evaluate their achievement through introspection. I don’t feel the need for any external judgement to certify my success.
Biggest success: My biggest success is setting-up of travel startup Tripscam. I didn’t know anything about startups and gained all the required knowledge from the internet. In the process, I learned digital marketing, product development, web development, advertising campaigns and so many other things. I feel successful today that I could bring my vision of Tripscam to reality.
Related: Four Essential Elements for Website Design
What is your top challenge and how you have addressed it? I read books and online publications to learn about sales and marketing skills. I tried to sell my product and learnt from my mistakes and honed my marketing skills. Being a computer science post graduate, I was able to pick up digital marketing in a short time. I researched online to find free and paid tools for digital marketing, keyword research, sales campaigns etc. I hired interns and gave them training for marketing. This was helpful in cost management.
Initially, people didn’t believe in my startup idea and there was no support. I could not gather a team of co-founders. I was also unable to get any seed funding. It was difficult times for me. I did freelancing to raise money for my startup and worked around 18 hours a day for over 10 months. I gave contracts for the things I could not do myself.
Who is your most important role model? Shradha Sharma, founder and chief editor of YourStory is my role model. Being a women entrepreneur, she has inspired entrepreneurship among women in India. I like her initiatives like HerStory, which especially supports and motivates startup founders like me.
[box_light]Website www.
Twitter @tripscam
Facebook www.
Instagram @tripscam/
Pinterest pinterest.com/tripscamIN/
Other www.linkedin.com/company/tripscam[/box_light]
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Edited by The Story Exchange