SM: What percentage of property managers do you think understand your value proposition? TM: Any property on our site with guest reviews understands. If you went to FlipKey.com right now and tried to leave a review of a random home, you could not do it. The only way you can leave a review of the
SM: There is another nuance which is very relevant in your business, which is organic search. Organic search remains relatively unleveraged. What has been your experience with that? PB: It is a great area if you can get it right. The first people who seemed to get it right were fringe buyers such as porn
By Guest Author Shailesh Otari Wirkle is a mobile consulting firm specializing in the end-to-end development of mobile applications. The company provides application development (both client- and server-side) on a host of platforms such as the iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry. Applications range from social networking to enterprise productivity. The company was founded by Varun Khurana,
By Guest Author Shailesh Otari Orangescape is a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) company from India that facilitates business application development. Orangescape is essentially a production environment that allows techno-functional experts to convert their ideas into business applications and take them to market. The platform is provided through a cloud offering and caters to the needs of both
SM: What were your statistics after you had completed your deal with TripAdvisor and gained access to 32 million users? TM: As of today there are 110,000 properties on the FlipKey TripAdvisor vacation rental network, and over 150,000 guest reviews. We have by far the largest collection of authentic reviews in the industry.
SM: When did you first see significant decline in your growth? PB: Our growth slowed dramatically in 2006 and remained that way in 2007. We lost a lot of money those years. It took us a little while to figure out that it was not just computer malfunctions.
Readers, I would like to hear from you if you are an Indian startup and have hit the $1 million milestone. Please email Shailesh Otari [shaileshotari.mba AT gmail.com] with your information. Shailesh is working with me with a specific focus on Indian startups. For the latest installments of Deal Radar and the rest of this
SM: Did you go public on the strength of the bankruptcy inventory? PB: No, that inventory was in 2000 and 2001. By the time we went public, bankruptcy inventories were not carrying us. We had the Safeway deal, and we had stable lines of supply.