Preparing for that much needed and well deserved holiday can become an absolute headache if you’re confused about tour packages. The sheer number of packages scattered across the web on multiple websites could become intimidating and frustrating. And that is what Polama tries to address. With its office in Victoria Layout, Bangalore, this venture brings together various holiday packages from its affiliates on a single website. The name, say the founders, is derived from the Tamil ‘polama’ or ‘let’s go’.
“We were classmates at IIT-Madras,” says MD Ramaswami, director and founder of Polama along with Dilip Panicker. “We love to travel. We used to come across problems when we decided on a destination. To explore all the options that were available required a lot of research. It used to take a long time to come to a decision. So Polama actually came from our own pains and the need to figure out how to solve that.” And the web, he adds, served as an ideal medium for the purpose.
Polama went live in December 2010, and since then, it has successfully gathered a multitude of affiliates for travel in India, including makemytrip.com, yatra.com, and Cox and Kings. “There is a need for comparing holidays,” adds Panicker, and their website provides a platform for easy accessibility of those packages, right down to the prices and the number of days.
“The whole idea came last April,” concurs Ramaswami. “Before that, we were thinking about building specialised holidays. And then we realised that we need to solve the problem of comparing holidays and helping people figure out their best option.” On initial investments, he says, “Actually, it’s more time than anything else.”
“Right now we have about thirty,” he reveals, on websites affiliated to Polama. “Many more are signing up. It’s like a supermarket. There are many brands that list their holidays on our site.” I was given a brief demonstration on how the website works. After a quick search of a destination online, the website revealed over a hundred holidays, further divided into getaways, among others. Tour providers were listed too, with their packages in brief as well as in detail, along with pricing. The website also allows for filtering of search results, by price, for example, or by provider. “It’s a fairly simple concept of bringing everything together in one place,” explains Ramaswami.
“It’s a one-stop shop. You don’t have to look anywhere else.”
As Polama’s services to the customer are free, I wonder how they make profit. “Polama generates its revenue from its affiliates.”
Public reception, Ramaswami admits, has been very positive. “People like it, and the comments we get are fantastic. In fact we talk to every customer who comes to our site. The website averages 6,000-8,000 hits a month. I think this works because we’re solving a very critical customer problem. What we’re trying to do is reduce the time spent on trying to find what you want”.
— suryakantham3@yahoo.com