Have you ever wanted to connect with like-minded travellers during your journey to share the experience with? How many times you returned from a holiday only to discover that a friend had been there too?
A travel app PowWow founded by two friends – Roy Kodali and Adarsh Atluri – seeks to help travellers socialise with others while on the move, connect with friends before you reach a destination and get some cool travel tips to discover the place up and close.
Friends from their college days in Visakhapatnam, Roy and Adarsh share similar passion for travel and enjoy socialising with like-minded travellers. It was during one of their travels in a long-haul flight that they both came up with the idea of the app. “Imagine being stuck in a 12-hour flight or train journey and have nobody to talk to! A journey can become interesting if you have the choice to reach out to the right people around you. We thought of creating an app which would help a traveller connect with others travelling in the same route and socialise with them,” says Roy. Launched in Android and iOS platforms over a month ago and developed by Codebrew, PowWow has been drawing the attention of travel freaks across cities for its cool features.
“It is particularly useful for travellers in bigger cities or those going on vacations. We have seen a good traction of downloads from cities like Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad and Vizag. Interestingly, we saw nearly 100 downloads from San Francisco and a few other places in the US in the short time since its launch,” says Roy, who grew up in Visakhapatnam, studied MS in Finance in Chicago and returned to Hyderabad to join his family real estate business. His friend Adarsh who also hails from the Port City, completed his Masters in Computer Science in Seattle and is currently based in Delhi.
A travel companion
The two friends took more than a year to launch the travel app after doing a market study and seeing the gap in the travel market and the huge potential for a social network for travellers including backpackers and solo travellers. “We both were very particular about the icons, design and the colour scheme. Apps are all about designs and we really wanted it to stand out,” they say.
Unlike a travel aggregator that simply gives fare comparison, PowWow is a complete travel companion app. “It’s particularly helpful for backpackers or solo travellers,” Roy adds. So, whether you are a single woman traveller or a family travelling with a toddler, the app helps you to log in through your Facebook account or otherwise, share your travel details, check out the profiles of other travellers going in the same route and allows you to exercise your choice to browse through the profiles and chat with people you want to meet.
Business networking
And it’s not just for socialising, PowWow also helps you to carpool with a fellow traveller to a common destination like airport, railway station or a bus depot or use the platform as an effective business networking tool. “There were so many instances when I bumped into friends at the airport. If we get such information well in advance, it works out well for the travellers,” says Roy.
The app also has other tools which help you to store your travel essentials like passport documents, gives weather information, sends out reminder notifications ahead of your travel, sections like currency converter, trip notes and packaging list and trip history.
Currently, the founders are working on the next update of the app which will give details to travellers of events and happenings near their destinations.
“We are also looking to partner with TripAdvisor to add more value-added features,” Roy added.
