For Innowaytive transactions

The new B2B travel e-platform, Innowayt, hopes to break down physical barriers and enable DMCs and travel suppliers to transact with travel agents and tour operators.

TT Bureau

Venya Traveltech India has launched the beta version of the B2B travel platform, Innowayt after eight months of developing its product and building its team. The portal will enable DMCs and travel suppliers across the globe to transact with travel agents and tour operators. Narayan Mallapur, CEO & Co-Founder, Venya Traveltech, says, “We started Innowayt with a vision of fixing the current state of broken B2B travel transactions globally. To rethink travel technology and make it invisible but truly assistive, we allow the travel trade to do what they love – take care of their clients.”

Mallapur adds that after having done a survey with industry experts, suppliers and agents from various destinations in August and September 2017, they started developing the platform from October end with a tech team of seven. They registered the entity in April 2018. “We have already begun on-boarding suppliers and DMCs from various countries from May 28 under beta. As on today, we have registered over 55 suppliers and on-boarded 33 from these. We are looking at 110 countries for suppliers. We plan to onboard agents from end of July and will initially target India, the US and European markets. At the moment, we are bootstrapped,” he says.

Vikas Khanduri, Co-Founder, Venya Traveltech adds, “Travel technology has touched all aspects of travel space – flights, buses, trains, transfers. What remains are tours and activities and as per Phocuswright Research, globally the tours and activities business is 80 per cent offline and growing at the rate of nine per cent per annum with a market size of US$ 118 billion.”

Speaking about the pin points of clients that this platform will address, Mallapur says, “It is not just a payment gateway. A supplier can upload his content, contracts, inventory, prices for multiple markets and the same is instantly available for all travel agents from different countries. They currently spend a huge amount every year visiting and canvassing for on-boarding of travel agents in different markets. Meanwhile, an agent currently asks for quotes from suppliers and there is a time lag due to time difference, delay in responses, etc. With Innowayt, he gets ready packages on the system once he logs in. He can also create packages on the fly as per customer requirements. These are only a few key features. We will add several additional features in phases.”