Sharing the love of travelling

Noted author and journalist Malcolm Gladwell introduced the concept of Mavens in his book "The Tipping Point," as one of the three types of people who play a critical role in the spread of ideas or trends. 

Mavens are individuals who have a deep knowledge of a particular subject or area and are passionate about sharing that knowledge with others. They are seen as information experts amongst their peers. 

And that is exactly what husband-wife duo Kashef and Sadia Haque were to their friends and family when it came to travelling insights. Being avid travellers, they were well versed in everything from visa applications to getting the best deals for hotels. So, their friends and family regularly reached out to them for travel tips.

That is where the idea of helping others with their travelling needs came from. They decided they would become the trusted, one-stop travel aggregator everyone was feeling the need for. So, in 2014, they took a leap of faith; they quit their corporate jobs and started an offline travel agency using their savings. Since they had limited resources although they had big visions, they started offline, but kept developing the website in the background.

In 2017, when they sat down with their first foreign investor they realised there was a significant gap between how they were operating and their vision for the company. 

"When we received the funding in 2018, we revamped the entire company. After we received that funding we closed down our offline operation and rebranded from 'Travel Booking Bangladesh' to 'ShareTrip' along with a full stack website," said Sadia Haque Co-founder and CEO of ShareTrip sitting at their Basundhara office.

They started with a small team of three to four members and have now grown to over 250 professionals. They are still expanding: last year ShareTrip secured an investment of Tk5 crore from the government's flagship venture capital firm Startup Bangladesh.

Currently, they have three offices located in Bashundhara and Banani in Dhaka, and in Chattogram, totalling 12,000 square feet of office space. By the end of the year, they plan to move into an even bigger office space, which will increase their total office space to 20,000 square feet. 

ShareTrip is currently the country's leading online travel aggregator, holding around 50% of the market share. They offer a comprehensive range of services through their Travel app and website. This includes domestic and international flight bookings, hotel reservations, holiday packages, visa processing, medical tourism arrangements, and travel insurance, including baggage insurance. 

ShareTrip prides themselves on being a very customer-centric company.  

"During the pandemic, we facilitated Covid-19 testing by providing information on where to get tested, and then we partnered with the relevant institutions to streamline the process, ensuring a hassle-free experience for our users," Sadia elaborated.

During the pandemic, they also tweaked their business model from a B2C-only one and added a B2B platform as well. "Even though regular travel was off during Covid-19, there were students and migrant workers who needed to travel. 

"However, these travellers were dependent on offline agents who were closed at that time. So we made a B2B website for these agents and shared all our inventory with them through that platform," said Sadia. Now, they have more than 6,000 offline agents.

The biggest challenge they are facing is getting small entrepreneurs in the travel and tourism sector to embrace technology and make the best use of their platform. "We're actively training them, and about 50% of tourism businesses we work with can now manage their own information on our platform. We're working to support those not yet online," said Sadia.

"While currently, ShareTrip is often associated solely with travel, our vision is for people to recognise that we offer more than just travel services. We are actively enhancing our website with engaging features, such as travel-related quizzes, to foster a deeper connection with our users beyond their travel experiences," explained Sadia.

In the next five years ShareTrip dreams of becoming a global player as well as further strengthening its grip on the market.