Metasearch site Wego.com to travel to India

Singapore-headquartered travel metasearch site Wego.com is foraying into India. The company has set up an office in Bangalore with 10 employees and plans to launch wego.co.in, the India version of the site, by the end of this month.

Wego is tying up with all major travel portals in India to enable metasearch. Metasearch engine is a search tool which combines results from several search engines, giving a more comprehensive result to a query. Wego.co.in would collate the results of other portals or search engines like MakeMyTrip.com, Yatra.com, and Via.com.

Wego enables a view of available flights, hotels, travel packages and deals from over 150 travel websites. The company has tied up with hotels from the Taj Group, Lemon Tree, Accor Hotels, etc, in India. It also offers a feature, DateWise, a search tool suggesting cheapest days on which one should fly.

The website also provides options for booking hotels. “In the next 18 months, we want Wego to become a household name. We will start by targeting mainly the ‘online crowd’ and spread through word of mouth. Our core strategy is to build a dominant market,” said Ross Veitch, co-founder and chief executive officer. In India, the company will compete with other metasearch engines like Travelocity.com.

Wego’s inventory includes over 350,000 hotels and over 500 full-service and low-cost airlines. There are 34 Wego sites globally, in 20 languages and currencies. Within India, the company is launching in nine vernacular languages. Apart from these, it is working on adding the Punjabi and Urdu versions. “We are purely focused on price comparison and we will tie up with both online and offline travel companies. We are also open to acquisitions if the right opportunity shows up,” Veitch added.

Besides India, the company is also planning to expand into the Dubai market.

Wego was started in 2005. In 2010, the company merged with HolidayIQ.com, an India-based travel content and community site. Some of the investors of Wego include News Digital Media and Tiger Global.

The revenue model of the company works such that for the traffic it directs to any of the portals’ website, Wego.co.in gets a cut from the portal. Besides, it also earns revenue from advertising on the website.