GOZAYAAN

Mr. Ridwan Hafiz is the founder and CEO of Go Zayaan and co-founder Analyzen. He always had the drive of entrepreneurship which resulted into such a successful agency like Analyzen. MBR had the opportunity to get the insight about his startup Go Zayaan and the travel-tech industry of Bangladesh.

                                                                                                                                                        

Exploring new dimension

With the higher level of disposable income of Bangladeshi people and their overall improved living standard, traveling is one of the things that has been in the pick of growth for last decade, which is a very inspiring scenario for any business related to travel industry. Traditional travel business are already there, which used to provide support to customer in traditional way. Offline method is not really convenient for people because there are very few opportunities to compare among the best deals available in the market. Travel-tech is already a very popular form of business around the world and the new generation of Bangladesh was looking forward to getting online solution of traveling business.

As Mr. Hafiz already had involvement in digital media and e-commerce sector because of his affiliation with Analyzen as one of the founding members, it was the core area for him to work on. With this mindset, Go Zayaan started its

operation as a startup in travel-tech industry.

Go Zayaan is targeting the B2C Air ticketing service. Their prime service area is domestic and international air ticketing. Alongside Go Zayaan provide visa processing facilities to the clients. Very soon Go Zayaan will be working on hotel booking, an unexplored area for Go- Zayaan to cater service.

Customer acquisition is the key

Go Zayaan offers ticketing service through their website. Go Zayaan does not offer any package tour to the customers as offering packages requires a dynamic website, which is not in that way right now. Yet, there is an option of searching the website and customize own package. In that case, with short amount of time a customer can purchase their desired package and that will be sent to their mail. It requires less than five minutes to complete the whole process.

To intrigue the users of this industry, different campaigns are held in different time of the year which had promocodes, discounts, cashback etc. As this is a new area to work on compared to any other industry in Bangladesh, it is necessary to motivate customers to take a contemporary service like travel tech solution. Go Zayaan keeps the price in a competitive range, but most important aspect of the service of Go Zayaan is that, it offers convenience to the user.

Go Zayaan is looking forward to launching 6 new verticals in future. Those includes introducing hotel booking facility, domestic and international packages and so on. All these new verticals are going to be introduced in new year. The app will be launched at quarter three of next year where all the facilities of Go Zayaan will be integrated in one platform.

Market full of possibilities

Bangladesh has a promising travel-tech market. This travel-tech industry have not even started yet. Because this is very nominal initiative that any company can take to capture the travel industry. This sector is lucrative and here some companies is doing really good. Flight expert is the name that comes at first place if talking about the travel-tech in Bangladesh, because

Flight Expert is doing really good in this industry.

Traveling industry should convert their services to online platform because the ultimate destination of this industry is that all customer will prefer tech based solution to traditional travel agency. So to stay in the market and survive tech based solution should be adapted by all the travel agencies.

Ridwan Hafiz

CEO, Go Zayaan

 

Go Zayaan sold ticket of around BDT 24 crore. Now the sales varies a lot. On a day with highest level of sale it was around BDT 30 lac and on average day the sales is around BDT 4 to 5 lacks only. All OTA should be targeting only this aspect with all the focus and effort which is to convert the customers from traditional travel agency to tech based travelling solution which is the most concern for Go Zayaan and this should be for others too rather than competing each other.

Industry has ‘Achilles Hill’

Hotel Booking requires sending remittance outward of Bangladesh. This process is really lengthy which can be troublesome for the tech companies. The biggest challenge for Go Zayaan is to convert the traditional customer to tech based platform. Another challenge is that the customer base that will utilize the tech based travelling solution are out of reach of the financial instrument, credit card needed to avail service from travel-tech industry. Mostly young aged people are tech savvy and they are the pioneer who can lead the way to flourish this industry. Utilization of service from this platform requires a credit card facility with huge credit limit. But the young aged people are not getting that facility in our country, which means a large group of customers who would be able to avail Go Zayaan’s service, are not able to utilize that.