¶ Introduction
Hey everyone, welcome to the latest episode of the SAS sessions podcast. today we have Sarosh Vagmar on the show with us. Sarosh has spent over two decades in building into the travel industry and currently is the founder and chief product officer at Spotnana. So hey Sarosh, it's a pleasure to have you on the show.
Thanks Salim. Looking forward to it. Appreciate you setting this up.
Awesome. Awesome. for people who don't know Spotnana, it's a, they're building like an AWS for the travel industry. And in this episode, we are going to, go into depth talking about
¶ Sarosh Waghmar's Background and Travel Industry Insights
the same with Saroj. I know like Saroj, I gave a very short intro about you. you spend two decades into travel tech, that's like super, like subject matter expertise that you must have built in the industry. So why don't you like introduce yourself in more words and. Tell us more about you and how has your journey been into the SaaS ecosystem?
Great. firstly, as I said, you spent two decades and I still feel I know nothing. travel is, I always say that travel is a human emotion. It connects all of us. And, at the same time, COVID showed us, when, the single industry that was most affected by COVID, as was the travel industry. the entire world did. And, we never knew what was going to happen, but this is one of those industries that just keeps coming back. And, if you think about it, it connects all of us in some way or the other.
We need to do these things in person. We need to connect with each of our fellow humans.
¶ Challenges and Innovations in Travel Tech
And I think travel is one way that makes that possible. talking about the travel industry and my experience in that, been doing this, since, 2003. And, three. And, as you all know, that, travel is complex in the sense, booking a trip is easy, but sometimes you have to wait for six hours to make a cancellation or a refund. It's not a click of a button as Amazon is. when you think of someone like an Amazon, it's so easy to shop on it.
You get everything and you rarely compare prices going to Amazon and comparing five different websites, but I'm sure Sunil you and everyone else listening, when you look for flights, we're comparing 10 different websites. Why? Now that's the question I keep asking everybody is why do you do that?
We all do that because we all believe there's a deal to be had right at the end of the day, one website or another or hotel prices, and that's The single biggest problem that we're trying to solve is why does one website show a low fare versus your travel agent? And sometimes if you're traveling with your entire family, personal travel, let alone business travel, you might go to the extent of calling people offline and just doing all these crazy things just so that you could save money.
And it's, this is just a, one of those things as we, as human beings do is because There's not enough transparency on the pricing and the whole premise of what we are building today at Spotman is how do we create trust and transparency for this industry?
how do you create this Amazon like experience where you can get all the offers that you want, all the prices of all the hotels and airlines and et cetera, et cetera, from all the suppliers and be able to make the best possible decision for yourself.
¶ Spotnana's Vision and Platform Approach
And I think that is really what we are focused on as Spotman is how do we build this platform and. We've taken this platform first approach of building out this tech stack that is challenging how the legacy industry has been built on top of this over the last several years. I think our whole focus is how do you make this seamless and how do you make travel accessible to everybody at the end of the day?
Nice. Nice. and you mentioned a good point, right? whenever you like, at least I'm trying to book a ticket, like the, I know that our aggregators and, at this point, you are even like looking at different aggregators because Like you're comparing like even aggregators to one another, right? Like to find exactly. And nobody ever said Hey, I'm ready to pay for a higher price. Nobody ever said that, right? Like I'm happy to pay a higher price.
everybody wants like deals and discounts and book at the lowest cost. But, interesting point, Saroj, you mentioned like you started.
¶ Building During COVID and Overcoming Obstacles
during COVID, right? Like exactly 2020. And, that was the time when travel, if anything, was the most affected. what made you start then? Like specifically in like 2020, take this big bet. And, I know people talk about, Zig when others act or Zig when the world's act. So was it that, or was it like something else? and how did you. Even, think of doing it like, Hey, I'm starting a travel startup in 2020 when travel is halted and convincing investors to come and back.
You and all of it must have been difficult. So we'd love to know, more on that.
I think, one of the first things is, I've been doing travel since, as I said, since 2003 and, running a small travel agency that kept on growing and growing. And, in 2019, I realized. That if I truly need to scale the services business that I have is I need to focus on technology, been dabbling in technology over the last few years prior to that. But one of the things that I realized that was fundamentally broken was the infrastructure that we operated in.
So the travel as a travel agent, the tools that were available to use were just archaic tools. They were not cutting edge tools like you'd have in any other industry. And that's where we thought of the disruption is that. If you want to build this, you've got to build this new infrastructure from ground up.
Yes, we started in Jan of 2020, who knew that, 30 days later, the world would go South with COVID, fortunately had some amazing investors that backed us and believed in the vision that, that had been laid out, that really Spotnano wants to be a platform that can basically build this brand new tech stack. And I think one of the big things that made this possible was cloud native architectures. with microservices, that was previously not possible.
The cost to do this would be so much more higher several years ago. So again, timing is important, but I think our whole focus was how do you build out this open platform that allows other people to build on top of you? How do you create this platform that any travel seller, anyone who wants to offer and sell travel can easily do so using this entire end to end tech stack?
And I think, the one thing during COVID we realized was As unfortunate as COVID was for the entire world, for us, it was a blessing in disguise because all we had to do as a company was just focus on product, focus on building. There were no other distractions. Was it hard? It was hard at the sensor because it is impossible to recruit people, right? And when you tell an engineer during COVID times, I'm starting a travel company. They don't care whether you're funded or not.
You're like in travel? I don't want to work in travel. It's over. And here we are four years later and we're still building. And I think, that was the big challenging is convincing people to see that travel would come back at least in the early days. And then as we continue to scale and as we made more progress on the product, got customers signed on, started believing in what we're building.
I think then obviously it becomes slightly easier, but I think the biggest challenge during COVID was, because at the end of the day, you're only as good as your team is, right? The team that you built. And, fortunately, the team that we built early on is still with us that have helped build the foundations of, the vision that we've had from day one was how do you build out this entire tech stack and this platform that can, offer to any other travel center in the world.
Nice, nice. That, that must have been a crazy journey, right? just building the product and, like not doing any GTM, not caring about like getting customers and, obviously like convincing people to. join a travel tech startup, especially like in 2020 or something like that you mentioned. yeah, I'm assuming it must have been like a great, ride.
¶ Creating a New Category: Travel as a Service
I was browsing a website and I saw like an interesting thing, where your website mentioned it's like travel, as a service. it's a new category, I believe that you're creating.
And, what measures have you taken to make sure that, Hey, you come up as a pioneer in the category and, how are Working towards this category creation, I feel like travel in industry, they're fear technology, like maybe not the airlines and all, but the hotels were like, nobody wants to use Updated tech, and something like that. So how are you creating this category and, being a pioneer, leader in this category?
I think firstly, there's a lot of work to be done. And I think, people say someone creates a category. At the end of the day, you're only building something, by standing on shoulders of giants. There are a lot of other people that have done some amazing work prior to us. I think, for us travel as a service and building a platform, there are some founding principles and one of those founding principles is what are the set of services you would build?
And if you want to be, or call yourself a platform company, the first thing that you need to realize is. You need to make sure that people who build on your platform as an open platform need to be able to make more and create more economic value than you will. That's only when you can call yourself a platform, when you let others build on top of you. Our whole premise from day one was never to become the world's largest travel agency or the largest OTA.
We're building this platform that can provide the infrastructure for someone to build on top of us. if you look at the founding principles of how AWS came about, if I were to say, call Jeff Bezos in this room and say, Jeff, would you have sold books? or built AWS first? You know what the answer would have been.
But history will tell you that they started selling books and hundred other things and when they try to scale and they offer this to other folks, their e commerce, infrastructure, etc, they are not able to scale. And that is why how AWS S3 was born in the early days. Obviously now it's a lot more services that they provide.
Similarly, when SpotNana started this journey was we built this infrastructure and the first customer happened to be SpotNana, the travel agency using this infrastructure, AWS's first customer was amazon. com. And some of that thinking is what we applied as principles here at SpotNana. What will we build? And what would we stay focused on? And that's how we went about travel as a service.
The whole premise came about is, as I said, with cloud computing costs going down and making this affordable, we had an opportunity to build out this infrastructure for travel that. You could build from ground up that previously was not possible. this whole concept of you probably heard of a PNR, something that he used at an airport and I'm sure somewhere in your life, you bought a ticket and you walked up to an airport to make a change at it.
And then the agent will tell you, I'm sorry, you've got to call up your travel agency and you scratch your head. And I just paid you the money. It's your plane. It's your seat. Why are you telling me to talk to somebody else? That is the problem that we are trying to solve for. How do you make sure that when you make a change or you purchase something from an airline, you can make a change anywhere through anybody else.
Why is that not possible today is because there are different systems of records. What the agent is looking at the kiosk versus what you have on your mobile versus what your OTA or what your travel agent book, they don't talk to each other. So Spotlight is trying to create that system of record by building this infrastructure from ground up and then allowing other people to build on top of it. So you can have other developers that can create more economic value in time to come.
So that is what our focus is. Why travel as a service similar to what? Software as a service is done, you know what salesforce and all have done applying some of those guiding principles on travel because traveling in general has been a very closed industry. It's not only adoption of a technology in general, it's just been one of those legacy industries where innovation hasn't happened much.
And for us, truly innovation and disruption happens is when you create something that's open and accessible to everybody. And that's been something that we've been very focused on, for tasks. And how do we drive that at the end of the day? And that's really what we've been trying to build here is like, how do you provide this task platform that other people can build on top of it and create more economic value at the end of the day?
nice. and, staying on, the same, aspect of category creation, like what are some of the challenges that you feel. that, spot on a face or is maybe facing, in terms of when you are creating this category, right? when you are the pioneer, right? obviously like a lot of companies who come up, they already. playing in an existing category. So everything is pretty much sorted. There's like clear boundaries and, guidelines sort of things that exist, but in your case, like nothing exists, right?
because you are the leader or you're creating the category. So what are some of the challenges that you face? And, this is especially for. listeners who are, operating in, nascent categories or maybe for them, it doesn't exist at all. So how can they navigate, being in the category, how do you tell your even customers like, Hey, what we are, right? like positioning also.
takes a big toll where you can't, where you cannot position somewhere on the grid, somewhere on the Gartner, report and all of that. I would love to know, what are the challenges you faced, in general? Sure.
I think, we have a very long way to go first. we just, we will, we feel we are barely scratching the surface. travel is 11 trillion industry. Business and leisure travel. And now this consists of your travel TMCs, travel management companies that focus on business travel. This consists of your OTAs aggregators and everyone else who sells travel. And, I think, it's such a large addressable market that there are various players trying to solve various problems.
I think for us creating travel as a service. The whole premise was building out this platform that would be able to address the market in general. And I think, some of the biggest challenges have been is like, Like any other industry, right? People are happy the way it is being done, but at whose cost? It's always at the cost of the customer or the supplier.
I think our big value proposition from day one is how do you bring the customer and the supplier together, as in the airlines and hotels and the car vendors and the rail vendors?
How do you create And give everyone a seat at the table, and the only way to do that, if you think about it is, the fastest path through true innovation, the travel industry is through collaboration with everybody, and, and by keeping this platform open, giving everyone a chance to build on it and creating the value for everybody, it was never like, At the cost of the customer.
If you think about it, when I gave you the example of you not being able to make a date change or waiting for four hours to make a simple date change or come back three hours earlier back from San Francisco to Puna, you have to go through so many headaches. But if you do anything else on Amazon or on any of the other e commerce websites, on one single click, you can get a refund. Why is it not like that in travel?
It's just because of so many middlemen and so much of this legacy infrastructure that's been built. By solving for that problem, you're able to provide a better experience, not only for the airline, but even for the actual passenger. When you bring everyone and solve for everyone together, it makes it more adaptable and creates a better user experience at the end of the day. And that's really what we've been focused on. have there been challenges that are constant challenges, right?
Because any other disruption you create, there are going to be naysayers. And there are people who just don't want to make those changes. But at the end of the day, you truly have to believe that what you're doing is there is value for everybody. And if you continue down that path, you just have to be relentless in that pursuit. there've been, I keep telling people that, Sputner has been my life work. I've been doing this since, as I said, 2003.
That's 20 plus years with a single vision that, if you want to build travel, build for everybody, which is why we have this mission here. Let's build longer tables and not higher walls. And the whole premise of building longer tables is let's be inclusive. Let's bring everyone here so that innovation can happen faster for everybody, not us at the cost of somebody else. And that is why it's very important, whether you are a product company.
Or whether you're a platform company, I think that's really the big thing that it boils down to at the end of the day is if you're trying to create a platform company, you have to realize that you can't build everything. You have to let others build on top of you to create more economic value than you, you would for creating for yourself. And I think those are some tough calls that you have to make because sometimes in early days, you're chasing revenue, right? And there's always a trade off.
You're trying to chase revenue. Oh, let me build this one more thing. If I build this one more thing, I can make more money, but then at what cost? And those are just constant challenges, not only externally, but even as a company, as you're scaling. what are some of the trade offs that you'll make? And I think the biggest learning in all of this is, how do you scale companies?
How do you stick true to your principles and your value and your belief system that this is only what I'll do, even at the cost of something else, because it's very easy when you start getting traction early on and you have all these customers chasing you to get, believe that you can build everything. No, you can't build everything. And that, humbling experience. is something that I would say is really important, especially if you want to build a generational company.
If you want to build a company that's going to outlive you and make that kind of impact, then you'll have to make those decisions today on how you build, how you scale. And, I think that's been one of the biggest things that we've learned as we continue to scale Sparkner.
nice. I think, interesting, point you mentioned and, which, was related to my next question as well. deciding between building a product versus, building a platform, right? what made you like, build AWS for the travel industry and not, Like amazon. com for the travel industry, right? building that product, even Amazon, as you mentioned, like they started with a product and obviously the grew that product, like super, like a giant one and then they, also explored like building a platform.
like why build a product, versus like, why build a platform? And why did you choose to build that platform and not, the product?
I think with my previous experience that I've been in travel and working with various other product companies, there were just so many people in the tech stack. The whole premise this time around was if you build this new infrastructure from ground up, you can create more value at the end of the day. And the whole approach was on building a platform and not just a product. Yes. We started off first. Building the product and bringing in content, bringing inventory.
Because the first thing from a travel perspective is can I find this cheaper? And if I present to you all the offers and all the best fares, you won't shop. So I win you on trust as a traveler or as someone who's buying or shopping online. First thing is to bring in all the content, similar to Amazon, have the best content and have the best inventory in the world. But if you think about Amazon, the profit.
Is made on the AWS side and that is why the whole premise was we'll build this infrastructure But we build out this one piece of the product as well, and over time continue to focus on the platform and build on top of that. So there are a lot of similarities and that is why we look up to Amazon and how they've gone about in their journey. And the decision of building a platform versus a product was very simple because at the end of the day, as I said, this is a 11 trillion industry.
If we can build something that can be used by other folks, which is why we have several customers from fortune 100 companies that are using our platform to some of the world's largest travel management companies using the platform to some of the world's largest credit card companies using the platform.
this platform is for Anyone who wants to sell travel or anyone who wants to consume travel, the impact of that and that surface area is much bigger, which is why the platform first approach is what we want to take. We don't want to be a travel agency at the end of the day, right? Because if you're an OTA or you're any of the large travel agencies, you still have to have a servicing arm, right? Pick up the phone and service customers, et cetera.
Our whole premise was, if you're a platform first company, then you can be tech enabled. We give this platform to other folks, other agencies, other service providers who can use this new tech stack, reduce their cost of operating and create more value for their own customers. So that was the approach that we took early on is. How do you build this platform that's more horizontal than vertical at all?
nice, very, interesting. And I think that's like really working out for you given, you mentioned some of the world's biggest, companies of travel are, using you. So I think that's like success, I would say. but. as you mentioned, the tech adoption and travel is very poor, and, it's not as much as it is expected to be as compared to some other industries.
¶ Future of Travel Tech and AI Integration
where did, and being again, like a leader in this category, being in this journey of category creation, where do you see like the, what the future holds, for travel tech? what's the next big thing? you feel like it's coming up for travel tech, according to you.
No, I've been talking of AI and if you think about it, when, a few years ago, when chat, GBT and all of those things came about, I think the first thing was, a lot on travel was some of the use cases that people gave is how to give you better itineraries, et cetera. But I think the big thing with AI is intersection, especially on travel is, please. How do I provide you the service in much quicker? I think that is what's going to be huge in that context.
It's not about give me an itinerary or give me something cheaper that you can easily do. But the ability to service you on your fingertips, not waiting for six hours, being able to make a change quickly, being able to recognize your patterns, giving you exactly what you want, when you want making that experience.
more sticky is going to be some of the, I think driving forces in travel that will be that everyone is going to start seeing because as there's so much data out there, but no one knows what to do with it. that's always the problem is that it's all over the place, folk folks that are going to be making an impact, especially in travel is how are they going to build these LLM models and create innovation on top of that. And that is why our focus is.
how do you create this platform so other people can build tomorrow on top of it, which is why I think, in travel, you see a lot of data, right? I see where you're going, what you do, who you meet and everything else about your profile. There's so much to capture and there's so much value to be created in that. if you're traveling from San Francisco to Puna, what is the best way to get you is one thing. Shortest flight is one thing. Cheapest flight is one thing, but along the way.
Have you ever experienced this at an airport? You're constantly looking up, walking all over the place, wondering when's your flight taking off, which gate you need to go to, where you're walking. Imagine you had it in the palm of your hand every time. You didn't have to look up. So Neil, you're boarding now in 10 minutes. Walking from where you are to your gate is going to be six minutes. So Neil, you have access to the lounge. So Neil, your bags have arrived on carousel number three.
And the first thing we do across immigration is looking at some board, figuring out where our bags came. And it's just crazy when you have everything access in your mobile. This data is available. It's just not being pushed out. So it's how do you create. Those experiences on top of what you have and making it seamless.
I think that is really where, can I say, why do I need to wait at a hotel for 15 minutes to check in and give my passport information and all of that when you can have all of that access already ahead before of me arriving there. How do I make that check in process more seamless? Because someone has the data. Someone's made a booking at a hotel. Why can't we push all of that to make your check in process more seamless?
So even though you talk of travel, it just has such a wide scope of so many services that can be built on top of it is just who's going to sit and do that work at the end of the day.
Yeah. good point. That is mentioned. I think everybody does this, right? they book the flight and the first thing, like you, probably once you land and. You miss hearing out like which belt your bag is going to come. And then you go out and look for a screen and Oh, where is the bag? Or you just follow the people where they're going and it's difficult. And I actually, I don't know if but I use this app called flighty. on my phone.
And, that actually like does like most of what you're saying for the flights thing, at least like it tells me Hey, which, which terminal that I'm taking, which gate I'm taking, what seat I have based on. I just send a forward my ticket to it and it'll have all the PNR, the QR code, everything ready. It also tells me if my flight is delayed or early. All of that jazz. and also where is the baggage going to come in and stuff like that? So yeah, that, that's like an app that I use.
it like, but what do you say? Like before I was using that app, it was very difficult and always not a good experience overall, but after using that app, it's it's seamless, right? it just tells me, shows me a countdown timer on, When is the check in, opening? When is the boarding gate closing? And, and all of that, it, it was very, it's very seamless. But yeah, I feel like there's like still a long way to go it, yeah, the hotels, there's
cars, there's rails. in Europe, rails are such a big thing, choosing the right seat is so important. People are going to travel from point A to point B. We want what we want at the end of the day, right? Yeah. And when it comes to travel, we are extremely finicky. We just want to get our frequent fly miles. We want the right seat. We want the best price. And we want to make sure that we have access to everything over those next 12 hour journey that we're going to take. And
we're
used to that, right? we're used to the world of Spotify and Uber and Netflix, we want to be able to make. Have that kind of pleasurable experience when it comes to travel to, I don't want to think about it. I just want to get everything done and on my fingertips. And I don't want to talk to anybody either. I just want it all on my mobile. If I want to talk to you, I will. Otherwise, I just want to be left alone. really, that's how we look at travelers. How do you make it seamless?
So one last thing before we move on to the lightning round section, right? you mentioned, that AI, part, And obviously everybody is in the chat GPT thing happened. Everybody's building on top of it or building alongside it or something like that. and I use this, Amex card and I have a concierge.
So generally I try to make bookings so that instead of me going and searching, I'll just give them a call and, they'll send me options and, it's easy to talk to, a person and, get stuff done whenever I have to book a hotel or a flight or anything. Right. that on one side now, versus, having an app on your phone, chat, GPT, like application on your phone, where you can ask them Hey, I want to, fly from SF to New York and, I want to leave between 7am to 9am.
probably take, have a hundred, 200 budget, whatever. And it gives you flight options. And then should I go ahead and book? And I say yes. And because now it already has my data, has my passport number, has my frequent flier miles number, all of that. And. You click yes. And it goes ahead and book for me. So that is basically like AI driving it. So how do you think that, those two things are going to compare, right?
Somebody talking to a human, versus, to get things done versus somebody talking to, an AI to get things done.
But I would like to propose to you, what if we build those LLM models using all the data that Amex had? And how does Amex streamline that gives that same level of knowledge and experience to you through a bot and an agent will only jump in when you really need the help or if you're stuck somewhere because all that knowledge resides with American Express. They've been tracking all of this. Think about it, right? You have the platinum card or the black card or the gold card.
You deal with that concierge service. You go to San Francisco, send me my options. Give me my hotels. They start recognizing that this would be a business trip. If you're going for 30 days, it's not a business trip. By default, you think about it. You're going for five days. it's a business trip. You want to be in and out. Where are your meetings at?
The ability to process all of that, turn that around quickly, reduce the cost for American Express, but at the same time, give you that same pleasure experience, recognizing your frequent flyer number and giving you that, Hey, you're big on Lufthansa. Lufthansa flies three times a week from Frankfurt to Pune. Why should a Sunil go to Bombay? To connect to San Francisco or to Seattle. See, those are the nuances. Where is Sunil taking off from Pune?
Does he have to take two hour ride to Bombay airport and then connect or find flight options that go from Pune to Frankfurt on the way to San Francisco, but being able to connect those dots right now, an agent will never sit and figure out and break it. and it's a back and forth between you and them. What if I'm able to do that in the palm of my hand and recognize that and push out those options to you and make that more seamless. And an agent would jump in as and when.
So I think that's where that intersection of knowledge and automation comes in. And recognizing those patterns is where the user experience starts becoming stickier. And giving that to you quickly, recognizing that for you, that when you come to San Francisco, you'd have meetings in this probably in downtown, or you probably have meetings in Palo Alto. You're coming to San Francisco. That's fine. From India, there are no flights that go to San Jose. So you have to go to San Francisco.
It was bigger international airport. But if the flight, if your meetings in Palo Alto. Then you need to drive not to downtown San Francisco, you need to go towards Palo Alto and stay somewhere there. Being able to recognize that's where, if you depend on a human being, and if you don't get your same agent again and again,
then you're going to be frustrated.
Why am I repeating
myself? Yeah.
you call at two in the morning to American Express, it might be an after hour service. It might not be the same agent that you talk to every day between eight to five. Then what? Yeah. That's when that experience breaks. That's when you get frustrated. Why are you asking me this again? You already know that I'm going to Palo Alto.
Yeah. So
I, this is what I mean, the intersection of all this data that's already there and captured in your profile and your buying habits,
how
do I mine on that and how do I create a better user experience and automate on top of that? That's the whole point.
Yeah. No, actually like same thing happened with me, right? The flight that I've booked for SF, now, like I spoke to an agent and, and I took a week's gap because I had to travel somewhere. And, like I called Amex again and I spoke to another agent and I didn't get connected with the same person, obviously. So I had to explain everything. so yeah. That, that, that problem is there.
And having in, AI to summarize it for you or to aid you, to save you time and efforts both for me and even the people at, these, the selling traffics. Yeah. Yeah. the, it helps all, all the, parties, Involved. Awesome. Yep. awesome. great
¶ Lightning Round: Personal Insights
chat, Saroj. let's move on to, the lightning round. So it's not like I've asked you like a lot of questions already, but three more, not related to travel, for sure, but, yeah, let's get started. So the first one, what's your one tip for managing work life balance?
I think, that's a challenge always when you're at a startup, but being, self aware about that, I think that can be a single biggest superpower being present in the moment and in doing whatever you're doing. I think, I think that it takes a discipline and muscle around that. And, being self aware that trying to balance it out, because if you are, you can win a marathon by being a sprinter and have to remind myself of that, that, sometimes, we must pause. So we may rise.
Nice. Nice. that's really, good observation, onto the second one. So what's the one thing that you wish you would have known when you first started?
Wow. Uh, and I think on this, I always say choose your heart, just I think work, personal life, everything. I think if you just, think about it, like they say, marriage is hard,
right?
Divorce is harder. Staying fit is hard, but being unhealthy and obese. Obesity is harder and, being financially disciplined or being in debt, you've got to choose your heart. I think, the one thing that, I wish I knew when I first started is, just choosing your heart, just make those choices and it's hard, right? Because this is a journey, there are no mistakes that only experiences, you're constantly being able to go back and reflect on that and, constantly tweaking that along the way.
I think that's one thing that I've learned that is, or I'm still learning. Let's put it that way.
Nice. Nice. it's like you have to make the least, worst choice. sometimes always. Yeah. Yeah. The, and the third and the last one, so also, What's one, book recommendation that you have for the audience? I
think one book that I've recently read, which I've really liked has been Indistractable by Nir Eyal. I think that, that book, I think has a lot of tremendous value, it just, makes you very self aware too. And I think that's just been a great read for me at least.
Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. I've heard of that. I've never gotten a chance to get my hands on it, but yeah, it's, it's a great beat for sure. Again, thanks a lot Saroj for, taking time, sharing all these insights, with us and, great stuff on building a new category, like travel as a service.
And we have a long way to go. I'm glad we got to connect Sunil. Thank you so much. see you soon.