Guiddoo - an international travel guide by your side

How exciting will swimming with dolphins in Bali or skydiving from Dubai’s Burj Khalifa be? If not, then does renting a private yacht or being able to walk underwater fancy your whim? Destination application Guiddoo provides you with up to 14 destinations and numerous activities to make your holiday worthwhile.

Founded in 2014 by Nidhi Varma, Vineet Budki, Prashant Choudhary and Biswajeet Karmakar, the start-up recently raised $300,000 in pre-Series-A funding by existing and new investors.

Guiddoo is an in-destination platform, offering tours & activities, dining, shopping and entertainment options for the Indian international traveller.

The destinations covered are Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the UAE; Bali and Jakarta in Indonesia; Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Langkawi in Malaysia; Bangkok, Phuket, Pattaya and Ko Samui in Thailand; and Singapore, Hong Kong and Macau.

Available on both Android and iOS, the company has partnered with Cleartrip and Yatra for easy booking and management. The app also tries to meet the food preferences of Indian customers.

Having handled over 10,000 customers with over 40,000 activities, the travel provider witnessed 12x growth in revenues in 2016, and is forecasting another 10x in sales turnover in FY18.

“While other companies like Viator (US), GetyourGuide (Europe) and Haiwan (China) are focusing on the US, Europe and China outbound, Guiddoo is very specific to the Indian outbound market,” founder Vineet Budki said.

Currently, the company clocks $500,000 per month in revenue and is striving to achieve break-even. “We project to reach $50 million in three years and looking at our last year’s performance, we should reach there as planned,” Budki said.

The company earns revenue through the difference in the contracted prices of experiences and the sales prices of these experiences. For example: A trip to Burj Khalija costs that costs 125 dirhams is bought by the company for 110 dirhams.

The next milestones for the 30-member team based in Mumbai, Pune and Dubai is to build the other 13 destinations to Dubai's level in terms of sales turnover, acquire more travel agents and OTA partners and finally launch its holidays' product.