Travel delight on highways

A bad travel experience can ruin a well-planned trip. Rajesh G had to go through many a bad highway travel experience. So, along with a team of four, he decided to verify the services on India's 225,000-km highways to make it more comfortable for those who hit the roads.

Founded in 2015, highwaydelite was incubated at and funded by the N S Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL) at IIM Bangalore. The mobile app addresses pain points faced by travellers on highways by providing verified realtime location and reviewed information on food, washrooms, stays, mechanics, emergency numbers and other services. It can be used either to plan a road trip by 'Search Along Route' by entering your source and destination or find a location on a real-time basis through 'Search Near Me' option, which throws up nearest options in the range of 15 km. It also provides filters to narrow down your search.

Rajesh doesn't want to divulge much on how highwaydelite plans to make money, as it is still in the early days. However, he says there is lots of scope, considering the app connects, for the first time, all the players in the system of the Indian highways. It will leverage the connected network through technology intervention and add value to these players, too. The start-up has received a pre-seed funding of an undisclosed amount from NSRCEL. A majority of its user-base is from metropolises, and Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mangaluru and Mysuru top the list. It plans to cover about 100,000 km of highways in the next one year and make it a one-stop solution for all highway commuters. The start-up does not have any direct competition but competes with players such as Google Maps, Zomato and Trip Advisor to a certain extent.