# Day 59 — YouTube 自动生成字幕（AUTO_GENERATED）

覆盖训练段 000–15 分钟。已去滚动字幕重叠。ASR 生成可能含识别错误。

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One night before we were supposed to get the money in the bank, we get a phone call and the deal was off. We were in the middle of CO. We were in a situation where we did the math that at zero revenue, we could not survive more than 3 to 4 months. [Music] You're 25. You work for a multinational. You're living in the south of France. >> Yes. >> Yes. >> And you're not liking it. You want to come back to India and work harder. >>

We realized that legally it was, you know, not allowed to work more than 35 hours a week. You know, when I asked my boss for a permission to come on a weekend, he he got very upset. Tell us what the kernel of the idea starts from before you go mass consumer. >> People are opening multiple browser windows or tabs to do the same search on three OTAAS, two airlines. Uh so we built this meta search engine that would you know crawl or use their APIs to

give you where the best uh deals were and then we would lead you to them to buy >> almost finish each other's sentences. So that that chemistry is really there. One thing that really annoys you >> hard to, you know, have a discussion that's not very objective because he's the one who's more data, numbers, and objective driven at times. Sometimes, you know, I have to control his positivity about certain things, you know. Hold on. This might not [Music] [Music] >> welcome to this very special episode

of the disruptors and um the duo that I'm speaking today to know each other for nearly three decades have been in business together for nearly two and first began thinking about an idea that seems very very obvious right now. I mean everyone flips open their phone and books their ticket whether it's for a train, bus, flight, etc. In 2007 that was not necessarily the case, isn't it? Welcome Aloc Bachwai and Rajnesh Kumar to this episode of the disruptors both founders and CEO coco of Exigo. >>

Thank you. Thanks for having me on the show. show. >> So paint thank you. Thank you so much for coming down. So paint us the picture of what's happening in 2007 when Exxico is beginning as an idea. What is the thought? What is the concept? >> Well uh one year even before that right um we are having these late night conversations Nish and I about uh the fact that you know it's it's probably the best time to go back to India and do something given that

and we were working in Europe together. So just a little bit of background both of us went to IIT. We were wing mmates in hostel uh rooms next to each other and then got uh our first job break at the same company which was amidas in in Europe uh in travelte uh were flatmates there and then I went to B school uh you know wanted to come back to India post B school because >> I didn't go because I didn't have the money so I stayed

back. you still landed up at Amdas. up at Amdas. >> Yeah. So I I think it was around that time and and we had watched uh the Steve Jobs commencement speech and you know I had seen sades so all those triggers were there but I think we really wanted to come back and do something here. >> So so one one second let me paint this picture. Uh you're 25 you work for a multinational you're living in the south of France. of France. >> Yes. >> Yes.

>> And you're not liking it. You want to come back to India and work harder. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean we in fact you know when we started working there we realized that legally it was you know not allowed to work more than 35 hours a week >> and that was such a bummer for us and and you know when I asked my boss for a permission to come on a weekend he he got very upset and he said that you know why do you

want to do that like go and enjoy at the beach on the weekend but I like we still insisted and we were eventually able to get a special permission permission >> you know Indians which is why they protest against immigrants taking jobs. You were the guys who go there and say, "I want to come on a weekend and spoil it for everyone else." everyone else." >> I know. We just thought that we probably arrived there like two decades earlier. We should have and it kind of

uh disillusioned us a little bit. But I think you know those were some of the reasons. One was this whole thing about doing something new in life like something that could impact like millions of lives. uh challenging the status quo that we were living in and obviously you know in the backdrop of an opportunity or an idea that you see that you know back there in India travel was booming there were like lots of OTAAS and new airlines that were kind of forming up and travel

itself was something that we really passionate about we used to travel a lot even when we were in Europe and so we thought you know all of this together was kind of it all kind of was brewing up right and it was it had to happen so we said okay that's it you know >> so the kernel of the idea sounds uh starts uh with a B2B platform. Tell us where the kernel of the idea starts from before you go mass consumer. >> Yeah. So actually

when we uh started and we named it Travenu because travel plus avenues we were still exploring multiple ideas ideas >> but >> but >> and the French influence was still there >> and the French influence was still there. So lur travel news but u we actually zeroed down on an opportunity which today is known as meta search but essentially involves helping travelers find where the best deals are u and this is the desktop era of the internet so you're talking 2007 10 to 12 million internet

users in India people are opening multiple browser windows or tabs to do the same search on three OTAAS two airlines airlines >> you know all of that and comparing >> uh so we built this meta search engine that would you know crawl or use their APIs to give you where the best uh deals were and then we would lead you to them to buy. So that was the initial idea when we started. Um in 2007 we launched that in June. And by the way we didn't

have a lot of capital. So both of us were nearly broke when we started the company. Uh company. Uh >> in fact we were in debt probably. >> Yeah. I still had my B school loan to pay off. It still had some uh family obligations to to pay off. And I think uh in hindsight you know it was not a decision that we ran an excel sheet on and felt you know good about >> but we were very passionate about whatever we were doing and we

were giving it our entire sort of heart and soul in in building it out and and we saw early growth primarily because of word of mouth because there was nothing like that. I mean you would >> so sky scanner etc were not opportunities at that time. I think at that time you know we were the leading metaarch in we were the first and the leading meta search in India you know for for many years from there until we actually uh found our next big growth avenue

in 2013. avenue in 2013. >> But you know between 2000 so so when I look back at at your history you have not one but two big uh crisis that could have put your business into extinction. >> Well more than two I guess >> a lot more than two. >> So two big ones which come to mind. One is you start right before the GFC, global financial crisis. You do a pivot uh and and then you have COVID come in. So I don't know about the

other crisis. We'll learn about it through this interview. But uh you start off and then the global financial crisis hits. How does that work? does that work? >> That that was a crazy story. So we were I think we're 24 hours away from signing a a term sheet. No, signing actually the definitive agreements and probably wiring the money in the bank because all the other stuff was done already and by that time log you know we were in that phase where you are thinking that oh

you know what you've made it big you've raised a big round and you are in that growth phase so we kind of spend a lot of money on marketing and we were almost on the verge of kind of running out of cash and then the GFC happened. So one night before we were supposed to get the money in the bank, we get a phone call and the deal was off because layman brothers had collapsed and like we had no idea of how to deal with that

kind of a crisis because it was the first time something like this had happened to us. So we went to the team and we told you know here's the situation. We'll probably run off money in like 2 to 3 months and so we'll have to let go of at least half of you. And the team really appreciated the fact that they they just thought that you know we had answers to all the question but that's what people always think about founders but sometimes they don't and

you know when they saw us that vulnerable that's when they kind of you know rose up to the occasion and they came back to us and said that you know what you don't have to do that give us some time and we'll figure out something. something. >> Wow. How many what what's the size of the team at this point? >> About 23 people 20 yeah less than 25 people. people. >> 23 24 people. So there's this engineer who was our junior from ITK. So he went

back into a room with the rest of the people and then came out 30 minutes later and said that you know what we've all decided to take 50% salary cut >> to survive through this. So you don't have to let go of anybody. We'll go through this together and you know we'll survive and and I think that that moment changed everything for us and it has become a defining moment in all crisis to come you know ever. How many of the original 23 are still with

you? Uh Uh >> probably one of them. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. But that was a long time ago. >> No, it was long. No, fair enough. It was nearly 20 years ago. So they stuck around and then you know you get through that crisis and then your next big pivot comes in 2013. comes in 2013. >> 2013 was a I think a groundbreaking year for us because for us because you know when we went back to the drawing board saying okay now we

are out of that crisis. What do we build? How do we build a large company? We realized that that perhaps everyone was just playing this market wrong when it came to online travel and the insight came from the fact that the penetration of air in the country was so low. It's still you know just above 4%. Right >> on the train side is where we believed you know we should place our bet because if you think about how India travels >> it's you know for most

Indians train is the dominant mode of transport to go from one city to another. It's not air. >> I agree. But in 2013, you are placing a bet that yes, most Indians travel by train and most of those Indians or enough of them will come to an app or a website or an OTAA to book that ticket and not go to the station or not call up an agent. an agent. >> That was not necessarily the case. >> It it wasn't. But you know our goal

wasn't necessarily to sell ticket to all those people because when we looked at that that market segment and and the people who were traveling in train there were lots of other problems that they were facing every day. They were facing this problem of checking their P&R status every day several times a day because 30% tickets are weight listed in India India >> which means that there's this problem that they always have this fear in their head that whether their ticket will get confirmed or not on

the date of travel and if they forget to cancel they lose the money etc etc. So we started by solving those problems and we just built a simple app which would just you know read your SMS uh with your consent of course and then start tracking your trip automatically and then as soon as your ticket would get confirmed you'll get a notification and so uh this became one of the biggest growth engines for us and then uh we we we thought that we were up to

something because we're growing like crazy and at some point we reached this situation where we had so many people checking P&R status on our apps. We had so much data about P&R status that we figured out that you know why not solve the next big problem which is can we predict whether a weight listed ticket would get confirmed or not because then that would kind of influence >> how do you even do that? How do you do how do you even do that? >> Because we

had so much data. I mean it might sound ridiculous that 10 years ago we built an AI model to to predict whether a weight listed ticket would get confirmed or not but we actually did in 2015. In 2015, you built an AI model to predict whether tickets would get weightlisted or not. And we're talking about this now 10 years later when AI is on top of everything. >> Yes. AI was not very sexy back in the days. All of this started by a very small journey.

We started in a room because at that point of time, you know, we didn't really know what's going to what's going to happen with our business and technology had reached an inflection point where mobile had just arrived. There is always this fear in the minds of companies that you know what if we are a larger company if you are the incumbent if you have an organization which has legacy systems or you know which is which has the organizational in inertia etc then there is this looming

threat of some other small company coming up with a small bunch of team using that technology >> correct >> correct >> as a foundation. >> So at this time you're you're a desktop website service. Yes, we are primarily a desktop service focusing on only flights being a meta search model. So this was the old company. What we did is that we said that before there is a new company or a startup that comes and disrupts us, the only way to save ourselves from that disruption is

to disrupt ourselves and so that disruption has to start from inside. So what we did is we created a new company inside the old company. Uh in fact I locked myself in a room with three of my best engineer. It it was a meeting room but it had a glass door so you could see it but the door was locked with keys so nobody could get inside and it was soundproof so nobody could bug us either. either. >> No one could get outside also. >> No

one could get out outside either because I had the keys and so we sat sat there for like 60 days straight. We learned Android and we built this app that I was talking about. >> 60 days straight. 60 days we learned obviously it took us like 15 20 days to learn Android first and then we started building some apps >> it's hackathon mode >> yeah and so this app came out and as you can see today that app is what drives the core business of the

company so if you think about it the old business as we know know today meta search business or the desktop business is dead what we built in that new co is the new business because we were successfully able to replace the old co with the new co. >> You know what is what is really coming through from your story so far is um um longevity of relationships and trust

# Day 59 — 火山引擎 录音文件识别（volc.seedasr.auc）

豆包大模型 ASR，异步接口。可能含识别错误，仅供听力对照。

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One night before we were supposed to get the money in the bank, we get a phone call and the deal was off.

We were in the middle of Covid.

We were in a situation where we did the math that at zero revenue, we could not survive more than three to four months.

You're 25.

You work for a multinational.

You're living in the south of France.

Yes.

And you're not liking it?

You want to come back to India and work harder.

We realized that legally it was, you know, not allowed to work more than 35 hours a week.

You know, when I asked my boss for a permission to come on a weekend, he, he got very upset.

Tell us what the kernel of the idea starts from before you go, mass consumer, people are opening multiple browser windows or tabs to do the same search on three OTS 2 airlines.

So we built this meta search engine that would, you know, crawl or use their APIs to give you where the best, uh, deals were and then we would lead you to them to buy, almost finish each other sentences so that that chemistry is really there. One thing that really.

Annoys you hard to, you know, have a discussion that's not very objective because he's the one who's more data, numbers and objective driven at times.

Sometimes, you know, I have to control his positivity about certain things, you know.

Hold on.

Welcome to this very special episode of.

The disruptors.

And the duo that I'm speaking today to know each other for nearly three decades have been in business together for nearly two and first began thinking about an idea that seems very, very obvious right now.

I mean, everyone flips open their phone and books their ticket, whether it's for a train, bus, flight, et cetera.

In 2,007, that was not necessarily the case, isn't it?

Welcome Alok Bhattacharya and Rajneesh Kumar to this episode of the disruptors.

Both, thank you.

Founders and CEO, Co CEO of Exigo.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me on the show.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for coming down.

So paint us the picture.

What's happening in 2,007 when Exigo is beginning as an idea?

What is the thought?

What is the concept?

Well, uh, one year even before that, right?

Uh, we are having these late night conversations, Nish and I, about, uh, the fact that, you know, it's, it's probably the best time to go back to India and do something given that, and we were working in Europe together.

So just a little bit of background.

Both of us went to IIT.

We were wing mates in hostel, uh, rooms next to each other and then got, uh, our first job break at the same company, which was Amadeus in, in Europe, uh, in travel tech, uh, were flat mates there.

And then I went to B school, uh, you know, wanted to come back to India post B school because I didn't go because I didn't have the money.

So I stayed back.

You still landed up at Amadeus.

So I.

I think it was around that time.

And, and we had watched the Steve Jobs commencement speech and, you know, I'd seen Swades.

So all those triggers were there.

But I think we really wanted to come back and do something here.

So one, one second.

Let me paint this picture.

You're 25.

You work for a multinational.

You're living in the south of France.

Yes.

And you're not liking it.

You want to come back to India and work harder?

Yeah.

I mean, in fact, you know, when we started working there, we realized that legally it was, you know, not allowed to work more than 35 hours a week.

And that was such a bummer for us.

And, and, you know, when I asked my boss for a permission to come on a weekend, he, he got very upset and he said that, you know, why do you want to do that?

Like, go and enjoy at the beach on the weekend.

But like, we still insisted and we were eventually able to get a special permission.

You are the guys who go there and say, I want to come on a weekend and spot it for everyone?

I know.

We just thought that we probably arrived there like two decades earlier we should have, and it kind of disillusioned us a little bit.

But I think, you know, those were some of the reasons.

One was this whole thing about doing something new in life, like something that could impact, like millions of lives, uh, challenging the status quo that we were living in.

And obviously, you know, in the backdrop of an opportunity or an idea that you see that, you know, back there in India, travel was booming.

There were like lots of OTAs and new airlines that were kind of forming up.

And travel itself was something that we were really passionate about.

We used to travel a lot, even when we were in Europe.

And so we thought, you know, all of this together was kind of, it all kind of was brewing up.

Right.

And it was, it had to happen.

So we said, okay, that's it, you know, so the kernel of the idea sounds, starts with a B to B platform.

Tell us what the kernel of the idea starts from before you go mass consumer.

Yeah, so actually when we started and we named it Travel News because travel plus avenues, we were still exploring multiple ideas, but.

And the French influence was still there.

And the French influence was still there.

So low travel news, but we actually zeroed down on an opportunity which today is known as meta search, but essentially involves helping travelers find where the best deals are.

And this is the desktop era of the internet.

So you're talking 2007, 10 to 12 million internet users in India.

People are opening multiple browser windows or tabs to do the same search on three ots, two airlines, you know, all of that and comparing.

So we built this meta search engine that would, you know, crawl or use their APIs to give you where the best deals were and then we would lead you to them to buy.

So that was the initial idea when we started, um, in 2007.

We launched that in June.

And by the way, we didn't have a lot of capital.

So both of us were nearly broke when we started the company.

Uh, in fact, we were in debt probably.

Yeah.

I still had my B school loan to pay off it, still had some family obligations to, to pay off.

And I think, uh, in hindsight, you know, it was not a decision that we ran an Excel sheet on and felt good about, but we were very passionate about whatever we were doing, and we were giving it our entire sort of heart and soul in, in building it out. And, and we saw early growth primarily because of.

Word of mouth, because there was nothing like that.

I mean, you would.

So sky scanner, etc.

Were not opportunities at that time.

I think at that time, you know, we were the leading meta search and we were the first and the leading meta search in India, you know, for, for many years from there until we actually found our next big growth avenue in 2013.

But, you know, between 2000, so, so when I look back at your history, you have not one but two big crisis that could have put your business into extinction.

Well, more than two, I guess more, a lot more than two.

So two big ones which come to mind.

One is you start right before the GFC, global financial crisis, you do a pivot and, and then you have covid come in.

So I don't know what the other crisis, we'll learn about it through this interview.

But you start off and then the global financial crisis hits.

How does that work that that was a crazy story.

So we were, I think we're 24 hours away from signing a term sheet.

No, signing actually the definitive agreements and probably wiring the money in the bank because all the other stuff was done already.

And by that time log, you know, we were in that phase where you are thinking that, oh, you know what?

You've made it big, you've raised a big round and you are in that growth phase.

So we kind of spend a lot of money on marketing, and we were almost on the verge of kind of running out of cash and then the GFC happened.

So one night before we were supposed to get the money in the bank, we get a phone call and the deal was off because Lehman Brothers had collapsed.

And like we had no idea of how to deal with that kind of a crisis because it was the first time something like this had happened to us.

So we went to the team and we told, you know, here's the situation.

We'll probably run out of money in like two to three months.

And so we'll have to let go of at least half of you.

And the team really appreciated the fact that they, they just thought that, you know, we had answers to all the question.

But that's what people always think about founders, but sometimes they don't.

And, you know, when they saw us that vulnerable, that's when they kind of, you know, rose up to the occasion and they came back to us and said that, you know what?

You don't have to do that.

Give us some time and we'll figure out something.

Wow.

And so how many?

What's the size of the team at this point?

About 23 people.

Twenty?

Yeah, less than 25 people.

23, 24 people.

So there's this engineer who was our junior from ITK.

So he went back into a room with the rest of the people and then came out 30 minutes later and said that, you know what, we've all decided to take 50% salary cut to survive through this.

We don't have to let go of anybody.

We'll go through this together and, you know, we'll survive.

And I think that that moment changed everything for us and it has become our defining moment in all crisis to come.

You know ever how many of the original 23 are still with you?

Probably one of one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But that was a long time ago.

No, it was long.

No, fair enough.

It's nearly 20 years ago.

So they stuck around and then, you know, you get through that crisis and then your next big pivot comes in 2013.

2013 was a, a, I think a groundbreaking year for us because, you know, when we went back to the drawing board saying, okay, now we are out of that crisis, what do we build?

How do we build a large company?

We realized that perhaps everyone was just playing this market wrong when it came to online travel, and the insight came from the fact that the penetration of air in the country was so low.

It's still, you know, just about 4%, right on the train side is where we believed, you know, we should place our bet because if you think about how India travels, it's, you know, for most Indians.

Train is a dominant mode of transport to go from one city to another.

It's not air.

I agree.

But in 2013, you are placing a bet that yes, most Indians travel by train and most of those Indians or enough of them, will come to an app or a website or an OTA to book that ticket and not go to the station or not call up an agent. That was.

Not necessarily the case.

It wasn't.

But, you know, our goal wasn't necessary to sell ticket to all those people because when we looked at that, that market segment and, and the people who were traveling in train, there are lots of other problems that they are facing every day.

They were facing this problem of checking their PNR status every day, several times a day because 30% tickets are wait listed in India which means that there this problem that they always have this fear in their head that whether their ticket will get confirmed or not on the day of travel. And if they forget to cancel, they lose.

The money, etc, etc.

So we started by solving those problems and we just built a simple app which would just, you know, read your SMS with your consent, of course, and then start tracking your trip automatically.

And then as soon as your ticket would get confirmed, you'll get a notification.

And so this became one of the biggest growth engines for us.

And then we, we, we thought that we were up to something because we're growing like crazy.

And at some point, we reached this situation where we had so many people checking PNR status on our apps, we had so much data about PNR status that we figured out that, you know, why not solve the next big problem.

Which is, can we predict whether a waitlisted ticket would get confirmed or not because then that would kind of influence.

How do you even do that?

How do you do?

How do you even do that?

Because we had so much data.

I mean, it might sound ridiculous that 10 years ago we built an AI model to to predict whether a waitlisted ticket would get confirmed or not.

But we actually did in 2,015.

In 2,015, you built an AI model to predict whether tickets would get waitlisted or not.

And we're talking about this now, 10 years later when AI is on top of everything.

Yes, AI was not very sexy back in the days.

All of this started by a very small journey.

We started in a room because at that point of time, you know, we didn't really know what's gonna what's gonna happen with our business and technology had reached an inflection point where mobile had just arrived.

There is always this fear in the minds of companies that, you know what, if we are a larger company, if you are the incumbent, if you have an organization which has legacy systems or you know, which is.

Which has the organizational inertia, etcetera.

Then there is this looming threat of some other small company coming up with a small bunch of team using that technology.

Correct.

As a foundation.

So at this time, you're, you're a desktop website service?

Yes, we are primarily a desktop service focusing only on flights being a meta search model.

So this was the old company.

What we did is that we said that before there is a new company or a startup that comes and disrupts us.

The only way to save ourselves from that disruption is to disrupt ourselves.

And so that disruption has to start from inside.

So what we did is we created a new company inside the old company.

Uh, in fact, I locked myself in a room with three of my best engineer.

It was a meeting room, but it had a glass door so you could see it.

But the door was locked with key so nobody could get inside.

And it was soundproof so nobody could bug us either.

No one could get outside also.

No one could get outside either, because I had the keys.

And so we sat, sat there for like 60 days straight.

We Learned Android and we built this app that I was talking about 60 days straight.

I mean, 60 days we Learned.

Obviously, it took us like 15, 20 days to learn Android first.

And then we started building some apps.

Hackathon mode.

Yeah.

And so this app came out.

And as you can see today, that app is what drives the core business of the company.

So if you think about it, the old business as we know, know today, metasearch business of the desktop business is dead.

What we built in that new co is the new business because we were successfully able to replace the old Co with the new Co.

You know what is what is really coming through from your story so far is, um, uh, longevity of relief.