TravTalk India Online Magazine
ParaBooking, a platform for safe, high-quality adventure tourism experiences, was founded in 2021 with an objective to fix the trust deficit in the Indian adventure tourism space, says Ankush Rana, CEO and Co-Founder. He speaks about the immense need for safety in this space in India.
Hazel Jain
Tell us a little bit about ParaBooking and how does it stand out from the crowd?
ParaBooking is a platform for safe, high-quality adventure tourism experiences. Starting from paragliding in premier locations in the Himalayan range, we want to take safe adventure tourism to the masses and at the same time, provide employment to local pilots and guides. We launched ParaBooking with the motto of urban ‘Travellers meet local guides’, verified guides, along with curated activities by the rural local community ambassadors.
We have worked with actuaries and underwriters to get an insurance product for search and helicopter, thus disrupting the market with our approach. We have come forth in this space with an easy-to-navigate app for operators and have worked with verified pilots and tested equipment to fix the trust deficit in the Indian adventure tourism space.
How are you funding your company and what was the initial capital infusion?
We bootstrapped with INR 25 lakhs and recently through the HIM Startup Yojna via IIT Mandi Catalyst received a funding of INR 50 lakhs.
How tech-enabled is your product?
We are planning to transform in a SaaS model for operations, and hence we are a highly tech-enabled product. We offer booking management systems for operators, app for guides/ pilots, API for integration with insurance providers and OTAs. We use Tech Stack: VueJS, Hasura GraphQL. The Saas application is built with data federation capabilities specially customized for the real-time operational nature of adventure sports. On one hand, it manages the assets and resources, and on the other hand integrates flexibly with multiple independent data sources covering the booking portal, insurance API integration, and real-time resource (pilot and equipment) assignments and more. In the future, we look forward to integrating with real-time telemetry through IOT and tracker devices to further enhance the security aspect of adventure sports.
What kind of trends do you expect in this market segment in 2023?
We have come to understand that the Government of India has dedicated a lot of resources and funds to promote Tourism in 2023. We definitely see a positive growth of adventure tourism considering the National Aero Sports Policy and DGCA regulations being relaxed for the same.
Does adventure tourism will become a huge market in India?
National Air Sport Policy 2022 (NASP 2022) vision is to make India one of the top ‘aero’ sports nations by 2030, by providing a safe, affordable, accessible, enjoyable, and sustainable air sports ecosystem in India. And one of their objectives is to promote design, development, and manufacturing of air sports equipment in India in line with the Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan. We believe India as a country with diverse topography has the great potential to offer varied adventure sports. Ranging from mountains to beaches and terrains, India can boast of it all. With 65 per cent of Indians being under 35 years old, it has the growing culture of adventure sports. It is only a matter of time India will emerge as a top adventure sports nation.
