Meet These Co-Founders From Pune Who Built A Multi-Million Dollar Travel SaaS, Now Part of TSX Listed Constellation Group

Imagine this: you are planning a vacation and want to book your accommodation. You head over to an online travel company you trust.

You search for the hotel you’ve thought of… and three listings pop up with nearly the same name. It’s a new city, and you are unfamiliar with the areas and locations.

Which one is the right one? You have no clue. You leave the online travel platform confused and end up booking another hotel from another portal.

This is a classic case of poor hotel mapping.

“This isn’t just about users abandoning the travel platform. It is about confusion, missed bookings, lost time, and lost revenue. At Vervotech, we eliminate this problem statement from the root with our highly efficient AI-based hotel mapping solutions. Over the years, we’ve helped thousands of online travel companies and agents tangibly improve their conversions,” Sanjay Ghare, co-founder of Vervotech, tells Startup Pedia in an exclusive interview.

Founded in 2018 and based in Pune, Maharashtra, Vervotech is a leading hotel accommodation data services provider. It offers hotel mapping, room mapping, and hotel curated content to more than 1000 online travel companies.

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HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Hailing from a farmer family in Maharashtra, Sanjay Ghare studied engineering from the D.Y. Patil College of Engineering in Pune. Next, he undertook a C-DAC course to understand advanced computing and the technicalities related to it.

In 2008, right after finishing his C-DAC course, Sanjay secured a Vice President position in the travel technology segment at Tavisca, acquired by JP Morgan. Here, he met Dharmendra Ladi, who was working as a technical architect in the same firm.

As for Dharmendra, he studied engineering at the Savitribai Phule Pune University. Later, he also undertook a course from the Indian School of Business.

Working together for more than a decade at Tavisca, Sanjay and Dharmendra became closer friends than just colleagues.

“We both aligned well because we loved solving problems and looking for solutions that aren’t just surface-level,” Dharmendra says.

While working on the travel arm of Tavisca, Sanjay Ghare and Dharmendra Ladi were exposed to the problems that travel companies, especially large online aggregators and agents, struggle with. One of the most prominent issues was the complexity and delays involved in sourcing and mapping hotel accommodation content.

“A lot of aggregators were mapping hotel content manually. The result? Lots of human errors and missed opportunities to serve customers. That’s when Dharmendra and I decided to introduce a tech-based solution to hotel and room mapping,” startup founder Sanjay Ghare shares.

Ultimately, both of them quit their jobs and began working on their venture called Vervotech. It was officially launched in 2018.

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EARLY CHALLENGES AND JOURNEY

Sanjay and Dharmendra, with four more co-founders, pooled their savings and started Vervotech with a bootstrapped amount of Rs 10 lakh.

“Our vision was clear: build an efficient system that eliminates the need to manually do anything in the hotel mapping space. We wanted zero errors and maximum convenience for our future clients, which would be online travel companies,” entrepreneur Dharmendra Ladi says.

The tech startup founders brought together a small team of six engineers, set up an office space in Pune, and purchased cloud hosting servers.

They decided that gathering data from the top ten travel businesses in India was of paramount importance.

The idea was to build algorithms on the basis of what the top companies deal with.

“It was like setting a gold standard of data evaluation, collection, and sorting in the first phase itself,” entrepreneur Sanjay Ghare remarks.

Even though this phase was a bit demanding in terms of the long working hours required to consistently refine Vervotech’s algorithms and build the platform from the ground up, the team persisted.

Finally, they validated their product and began reaching out to online travel companies and agents in need of hotel and room mapping solutions.

“Our value proposition was simple: let us map your hotels’ content and we guarantee an increase in booking conversions,” Sanjay Ghare adds.

In 2018 itself, during October, Vervotech bagged its first client – Akbar Travels, one of the country's largest travel companies.

Within just one month of their product launch, Vervotech received its first paycheck.

Bootstrapped from the beginning, the tech startup founders, Sanjay Ghare and Dharmendra Ladi, placed laser-sharp focus on increasingly expanding their outreach efforts and onboarding major global travel companies, agents, and aggregators.

“We didn't have sufficient funds to sustain without clients, like any other new business. We knew that sustainable growth could take place only when our client roster keeps getting longer,” Dharmendra Ladi explains to Startup Pedia.

By adding value to clients’ business operations and making things more seamless and streamlined for them, Vervotech started growing.

But just one year into the market, the COVID-19 pandemic happened. The travel industry was hit hard and witnessed a major slump.

“Fortunately for us, Vervotech remained largely unaffected. Our customers were kind enough to continue their payments. We all knew that global travel wouldn't just bounce back but surge like never before. And that's exactly what happened when the trend of revenge travelling came up,” entrepreneur Sanjay Ghare shares.

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VERVOTECH: OFFERING ACCURACY, ELIMINATING HEADACHES

Today, Vervotech operates as one of the very few key hotel mapping service providers in the world.

The founders describe it simply: it's a smart librarian for hotel content.

Using its AI-native language and processing models, Vervotech maps hotel content across 400+ global suppliers, spots the duplicates, corrects mistakes, and labels everything in real-time.

“Travel companies have a lot to deal with. They are, anyway, a complex business. Vervotech is not just easing but literally eliminating their headache. They no longer have to worry about the accuracy of their hotel data. They can just focus on what they do best: sell travel and serve customers,” Sanjay Ghare explains.

Currently powering more than 1000 online travel portals worldwide, Vervotech promises AI-driven accuracy of 99.999%.

This accuracy, coupled with the offering of unified and optimized content, has made Vervotech a reliable hotel mapping solution, enabling travel companies and aggregators to focus on their core business.

“From start to finish, Vervotech is seamless. We have an extremely easy-to-use interface and API. Clients can easily configure supplier credentials and upload content files,” Dharmendra Ladi says.

GROWTH AND FUTURE

Initially, Vervotech started with a team of six core people. Today, it has expanded into a 90-member team spanning departments of engineering, marketing, communication, and sales.

The hotel mapping service provider’s clients include names like Akbar Travels, Stuba, Within Earth, WebBeds, INNTEL, PriceTravel, Travelxp, FCM, Travel Leaders Group, Hotel Planner.com, and 5M Travel Group.

The founders claim that Vervotech has negligible competition in the Indian market.

“The country's market is too thin when it comes to hotel mapping service providers. Our competitors are currently only outside of India,” startup founder Sanjay Ghare explains.

Recently, Vervotech, in a multi-million dollar acquisition, was acquired by Juniper Group, a division of Constellation Software, one of the largest global software conglomerates.

“Despite the acquisition, we are committed to remaining an independent entity in terms of our brand and operations. But there will be seamless integration with the Juniper Group to provide our customers with easy access to our services,” Sanjay mentions.

In the near future, Vervotech is focusing on onboarding large-scale travel companies from regions like the Middle East, Africa, and Europe.

Additionally, Vervotech’s founders and team are working towards solidifying their position as the most preferred and go-to option in accommodation content standardization. This will be helped by acquiring additional companies working in the travel space.

“I am not going to say that we never imagined we'd come this far. Because we did. We knew exactly how much effort it would take, and we kept putting it in, without excuses. We now want Vervotech to have a strong brand recall, almost like Apple’s iPhone,” startup founder Sanjay Ghare signs off. 

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