Sunday, July 1, 2007

Source: iXiGO Wednesday, June 20, 2007 01:01 PM IST (07:31 AM GMT) Editors: General: Consumer interest, Travel & tourism; Business: Advertising, PR & marketing, Information technology, Travel & tourism; Technology
Returnee Entrepreneurs Launch “travel 2.0” Search Engine for India
Gurgaon, Haryana, India, Wednesday, June 20, 2007 -- (Business Wire India)Travenues, a “travel 2.0” technology start-up based in Gurgaon announced the launch of iXiGO (www.iXiGO.com) – a travel search engine for Indian online and mobile consumers. Conceived a year ago, iXiGO is backed by a team of returnee IITian entrepreneurs and includes a German national in its founding team that has rich travel technology experience. The proliferation of airlines as well as online travel agencies in India means that increasingly, consumers have many places to book their tickets, but no guarantee of getting the best deals always at one place. Value-conscious consumers will thus need to spend even more time and effort in finding the travel deal they are looking for on multiple browser windows. iXiGO simplifies the travel search experience by looking across all possible sources of travel deals and content and provides up-do-date, real-time pricing and availability information with ticketing and fulfillment directly on the vendor’s portal. iXiGO aims to provide Indian consumers a comprehensive and unbiased platform for searching and comparing airfare information & deals from multiple airlines and online travel agencies and shall soon expand to cover hotels, activities and other travel categories. By showing tax-inclusive fares directly from the airline portals, iXiGO empowers consumers with unbiased information, and ensures that do-it-yourself consumers can book tickets with confidence, without the need for a travel agency. “Online Travel needs to evolve to the next level in India, and with the arrival of iXiGO, Indian consumers shall be freed from the pains of non-transparent pricing, slow search results and barely-usable interfaces. Travel 2.0 has arrived!” - said Aloke Bajpai, the Founder & CEO of iXiGO. An electrical engineering graduate from IIT Kanpur and an MBA from INSEAD, Bajpai had worked with Amadeus Europe, the world’s top travel technology company, before deciding to return to India and build the “new new thing” for the Indian market along with his Amadeus, IIT and INSEAD colleagues. When asked how iXiGO will differentiate its offering from other online travel portals, Bajpai responded - “We don’t sell tickets. We tell you where you can buy them and then give you a direct checkout on the provider’s website. We are thus driven totally by the needs of our users, and we will keep innovating in travel search technology to help travelers find the best deals online – wherever they might be”.

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