Imagine I'm a VC, offering you $20M to build any technology-enabled product/service you'd like. Please walk me through how you would get started? (Problem, Solution, User, Monetize, TAM)

Clarifying questions:

Who is making this product? Google

Any company-wise strategic initiatives with which this product should be aligned? No

Any deadline? Less than 12 months

Specific app with which should we develop? No

Any geographical limitations? No  

Goal: To develop largest tourist-cum-shopping website for India.

Describe the Product:

India has a rich cultural and historical heritage, variety in ecology, terrains and places of natural beauty spread across the country.

This product will provide information about different tourist places in India. It will also show information about India’s different state culture.

As Google's mission is to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

This product provides the information about India’s culture and tourist places which matches with the Google mission.

User Group:

1.       Young Age group (18-35 years):  people are more likely to use technology, more enthusiastic about travelling to other places and interested in shopping.

2.       Working professional with family (35-60 years): people used to visit with his family in holiday season.

3.       Old age group (60 years +): people generally prefer to visit religious places.

I will choose young age group (18-35 years) user persona due to largest in number and enthusiastic about visiting and shopping.

Pain point:

1.       Travel decisions: where to go, what is good or not, recommendations

2.       No way to navigate user journey end-to-end

3.       Discover and learn about new culture

Solution:

I will choose pain point 1 because this has the largest impact on user’s pre-travel decision where they can enjoy maximum. After that choose pain point 2 because it will affect during travel.

1.       Personalized AI recommendation for each user based on their choice where they can learn maximum new things.

2.       After choosing the location, for hospitality at each visiting location, traveller can connect to hosts through website which will arrange all the facilities such as accommodation, site visit etc.

3.       Visitors can choose tourist guide with the help of hosts which can guide the visitor on the tourist site and make him learn about new cultures.

4.       Visitors can choose to purchase tourist place’s traditional cloth or memorable thing through the website or website linked shop offline or online.

Evaluating Solutions:

So, in MVP we can Implement

·         AI Recommendation

·         Connecting to Hosts

·         Shopping

Traveller can choose tourist guide with the help of Hosts. It can be ignored in MVP.

Cost Structure

Software, Cloud and Data Centre Expenses:15%

Data Collection, website development and maintenance expenses: 30%

Marketing and Promotional Expenses: 11%

Employee benefit Expenses: 25%

Depreciation and amortization Expenses: 4%

Other Expenses: 15%

Monetization:

For Monetization, The Major segments are:

·         Hosts: who receive the bookings and host the visitor.

·         Shop: who get the order for traditional product such as cloths, statue, etc. and deliver the product.

Monetization Strategy:

1.       Following the usual trend of monetizing through Ads in the segment

2.       Subscription based model: Applicable for Hosts and Shops both.

3.       Taking a cut from the transaction: Applicable for Hosts and online purchases from shops both.

Apart from Ads, I will use combination of subscription-based model for registering and cut from transaction-based model.

Total Addressable Market (TAM):

Foreign Tourist arrivals in January-August, 2022 were 3,263,219. Suppose each foreign tourist spend RS.5 Lakh for tour.

Total Addressable market from Foreign Tourist in 12 months =1.5* 326321.9*5 million= 1.5*326.3*5 billion=$30 billion  

 Indian tourism generated $170 billion revenue in 2021. By 2028, international tourist arrivals are expected to reach 30.5 billion and generate revenue over US $59 billion. However, domestic tourists are expected to drive the growth, post pandemic.