Whenever one visits a place, whether it's far a eating place, motel or a visitor destination – a 21st century practice is for the establishment to invite for remarks inside the form of evaluate. There are limitless opinions written online on a each day basis on various systems and even in neighborhood languages.
Most of this facts is to be had in abundance and, at instances, it will become hard for hoteliers who fail to get enough mentions on these overview platforms.There are even times while consumers go away a poor comments on a review site, social media or reserving structures. In a global that is absolutely digital, this form of bad feedback affects lodges and journey businesses and can't be contained. Making sense of this clutter is a essential want of the hour however it becomes an unnerving venture for many hoteliers and the journey enterprise, as a whole, because of which they face big drops of their traction, as they are unable to attract customers in the direction of their platform.
Pranjal Prashar and Vineet Chouhan sensed an possibility to tap into this untapped market and founded Repup in December 2014. Repup, a B2B ORM (Online Reputation Management) platform, offers consumer revel in management equipment for resorts and hospitality companies. The platform allows inns to measure, benchmark, and enhance the user enjoy for their visitors. Owned and operated by Piquor Technologies, the startup released its recognition and customer experience management offerings for a confined organization of partners before launching, officially, nine months later in 2015.
And for the reason that opinions maketh the startup, Repup has these days bagged the ‘Tech Rocketship’ award on the India UK Tech Summit 2016.
Headquartered in Gurugram, it currently has purchaser footprints in 21 towns – with residences such as Radisson Blu, ITC WelcomHeritage, Fortune, Lemon among others related to it. Today, the startup has over 22,000 rooms on its platform and boasted 600% increase in the calendar yr 2016.
To upload to the USP of the imaginative and prescient, within three hundred and sixty five days of its launch, it even controlled to bag an undisclosed quantity of funding from the Indian Angel Network (IAN).
“For an early-level startup, it become very crucial to be guided by a consortium of skilled buyers who helped us with the product and expansion. Having a few early customers on the platform gave us huge validation of the problem in this area. Reaching out to the right traders who recognized with this market want helped. Since the early degree in a startup is all approximately the product and the crew, we invested in product marketplace fit and locating human beings with the right set of aims,” starts offevolved Pranjal Prashar, co-founder and CEO, Repup.
Making Sense Of Available, Chaotic Data In Hospitality
It is located that entrepreneurs hailing from small towns move to large towns to fulfil their huge desires with not anything greater than skills and will. These cities promise to offer all the essential assets to show their aspirations into reality. This became Pranjal’s journey, as nicely, who continually believes – ‘Everything is feasible; when you have the need to accomplish it!” He left Siwan, a small town in Bihar, to fulfil his dream of owning a business enterprise.
“I provide due credit score to my background for ingraining in me the right mindset and ambition to dedicate my existence in developing easy but highest quality solutions to issues that count number. The emphasis on economic prudence is what drives marketers like me to make in-residence approaches and groups extra green,” he provides.
Pranjal, who holds a twin degree in IT and Management from IIIT Gwalior, continually taken into consideration himself a product guy. During his three-year stint at growth-stage startup Aujas, he were given a hazard to paintings in the B2B IT product consulting space. While working there, he witnessed a variety of statistics available about ability and present clients in the hospitality zone on-line – but this facts existed in a chaotic nation and there has been an urgent need to make sense of it.
He understood the fee of this information to convert guest studies and in 2012 while visiting to Gurugram he mentioned his startup concept with his pal Vineet Chouhan and – similar to that – kick commenced their startup adventure.
“I cherish my past revel in and attribute whatever I have learnt approximately entrepreneurship to Repup. It turned into no epiphany or a single moment however a validation constructed over a time frame. When era is built around the client – it has the power to convert patron studies in any industry. As a techno-industrial individual, if you may create four such merchandise that resolve actual-global problems, you'll have lived your purpose,” says Pranjal.
While building the product, Pranjal stayed in 80 special resorts in Mumbai to validate product framework.
“RepUp is an abbreviation for ‘recognition upliftment.’ The popularity of a player inside the hospitality enterprise is depending on how carefully a emblem listens to its clients – both glad and sad. Working backwards, going from your manner to recognize your guests’ particular desires and optimising the workflow to serve them higher is a ought to. Through our platform, we permit hoteliers to have better manage over visitor experience control and consequently their popularity,” he provides.
Using NLP To Enhance Customer Experience In Hotels
“Repup applies a proprietary five-stage CEM (Customer Experience Management) adulthood model and uses a patent-pending algorithm to present visitor enjoy in a measurable framework,” says Pranjal.
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With its in-house era the startup brings discipline in the process of evaluation management by aggregating evaluations spread across dozens of OTAs (Online Travel Aggregators) and evaluation portals. “Making sense of the chaos to offer key insights on clients facilitates resorts enhance patron reviews,” says Pranjal.
The platform mechanically collects visitor feedback, complaints, and reviews. It is a Facebook form of a feed in which hoteliers can take part, in order that the hotelier can deliver an amazing client revel in in a managed manner.
Repup monetises thru a subscription based totally version. It costs an an annual subscription costs which is INR 150 in keeping with room for a month, paid by means of hoteliers for the usage of their visitor experience management platform.
With a team of forty two, Repup applies semantic technology (which encodes meanings one by one from data and content files separately from software code) and has, in its kitty, intuitive decision-making tools. The organization claims that its technology analyses the original overview data with almost 90% accuracy.
“We have recently added collaboration and workflow systems for large lodges wherein in-house tactics (provider requests, complaints) are automatic. Hence, by way of optimising the system in a hotel, we are helping save you bad guest reviews altogether,” says Pranjal.
Repup has also partnered with tour website online TripAdvisor and has acquired get admission to to its content (critiques, comments, and lawsuits) published by using inn guests.
“Partnering is genuinely an top-rated channel to get mass adoption on your product. By integrating with other vital gamers in the motel environment like Hotelogix, Axis Rooms, and Ezee Technosys, we are rolling out a freemium model product for all our current clients. The dating is symbiotic with the partners too, benefitting from integration with our platform. At the identical time, customers get the benefit of a notably integrated solution. For example, CEM (Customer Experience Management Platform) integration with PMS (Property Management System) can permit the automation of many tactics within the inn,” explains Pranjal.
With the help of Repup, motels reportedly witnessed forty% improvement of their Net Promoter Score, guest pride, and repeat clients.
End Of 2017: Adding 900K Hotel Rooms
Currently, the travel and hospitality enterprise is witnessing thrilling instances. According to the founder – global, almost 88% of users agree with online evaluations, as compared to non-public guidelines. Hence, no longer listening to what is being spoken on-line approximately the emblem is some thing which can lead one into problem.
The market is evolving in the sort of manner that simplest folks who examine this records in time to personalise their service and improve guest satisfaction will live to tell the tale. Repup, that's competing with global players like Medallia and Trustyou, is extending its solutions to a bigger section of resorts past the standard five-megastar.
The startup is also looking to address destiny challenges via growing an surroundings around the platform, introducing its advanced CEM platform, so as to be meant for corporation clients. With the assist of this platform, it's miles aiming to help hoteliers maintain their guests glad across the purchaser life cycle – pre-arrival, on-premises, and post-live.
“Every 1/3 lodge in the pinnacle 10 Indian brands is a RepUp client. We are nevertheless in the early section of our increase journey and purpose to be the chief in the CEM space, globally. Furthermore, utilization of analytics within the travel tech enterprise has huge potential, we intend to leverage analytics and deliver commercial enterprise value to small accommodations at low-cost fee,” says Pranjal.
Repup targets to hit 10x boom mark within the subsequent 18 months with the aid of persevering with to offer innovation and guide to hoteliers to obtain their promise of exceeding guest expectancies.
It has already commenced sales in the European market and is also in advanced discussions with channel companions in Southeast Asia. By the cease of this financial year, the organization will reportedly cross $500K in sales, with a crew of 42. It is in addition eyeing Month-on-Month boom of 25% to 30% by the subsequent financial year.
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With foremost partnerships with journey carriers inside the pipeline, Repup is also seeking to add 900K inn rooms on its platform by the end of 2017. Not best this, the company is likewise trying to attain $1 Mn ARR (Accounting Rate of Return) by way of 2017. “We are targeting to gain a 20% pie share of the present four-megastar and 5-famous person residences in India in calendar year 2017,” concludes Pranjal.
Editor’s Note
Estimated number of lodge rooms in India is manner above 1.7 Lakhs, that's anticipated to upward thrust through 60,000 lodge rooms (across segments) over the next 3-five years. Furthermore, in 2016 Google said that over 8 Mn Indians had been anticipated to e-book their inns online and most of the bookings can be accomplished thru on line tour businesses (OTAs). Most of them like MakeMyTrip, OYO Rooms aren't absolutely promoting accommodation online but additionally act as an oblique influencer via person evaluations.
Players like Repup have a completely unique role to play in figuring out the course of these structures, and perhaps, indeed their future too. With the rise of on line manufacturers such as OYO Rooms, Fab, Treebo, the fee-plus Indian hospitality enterprise seems to have an constructive outlook. To add to this, in the last few years, overseas gamers inside the luxurious and branded phase have additionally shown deep hobby within the Indian marketplace.
For businesses like RepUp, the timing seems to be just proper with 2,00,000 addressable accommodations in India, Thailand, Sri Lanka ,and Indonesia. But with more gamers emerging throughout verticals in a fast-changing tech-based global, will it be capable of keep in advance of the competition – that’s the question.
