 Ladies and gentlemen, we are moving on to our next speaker and this one is definitely a much awaited one, Airbnb. You see in India they are really making people reimagine the way to travel and so is globally a benchmark for travel. So let me now invite on stage the country head for Airbnb who is also responsible for overseeing the operations for the Indian market. Let me also tell you he is a young entrepreneur who started a very young age while he was still at the Delhi University and he started a youth-based website before joining Airbnb. He also co-founded Let's Buy.com and Indian Electronics e-commerce site which was taken over by Flipkart eventually. He's also had stints with Ernst & Young as a consultant and he's been working with teams all across the globe. So ladies and gentlemen, a much awaited session. Please put your hands together for Mr. Amanpreet Bajaj. Very welcome to you sir. Good evening everyone. Thank you for having me here to tell our story that the brand has seen over the last few years and I would like to start with a small story. So my name is Amanpreet Bajaj. I run Airbnb in India and I love my job and why do I love my job is that I'm super and deeply passionate about one word which is travel. In fact in the last one year or so I've been privileged to have visited at least 20 new cities and while I visited those places some for work some for leisure I was able to stay in some beautiful Airbnb's across the world and what I remember the most from those places is not the places that I visited but the experience that I had and let me just talk about one such experience. This is one of my experiences in in San Francisco. I was there six months back and this was not the first time I was in San Francisco. My work takes me there but this time it was very special. I stayed in an Airbnb which was more than 100 years old. It's a Victorian house in a very quiet neighborhood in the Noi Valley which is a valley which is known for not many touristy things and my host was a guy called Vincent. In fact he's a super host on Airbnb which means that he's been providing amazing hospitality for many guests across you know the world and in many years. Vincent is a medical professional and hospitality is something that he does on the side. It's also a passion for him. As I said I had traveled to San Francisco many a times and every time I would go to the Golden Gate Bridge do the PR 39 some of the things that everyone else would have done but this time it was very very different. Vincent started talking about his friends in the Silicon Valley. He introduced me to a few people who were very very interested in understanding what's the internet space doing in India and so he invited a few friends over for dinner and we had about four or five people talking about India the startup economy the internet age marketing the growing millennial you know is the growing millennial praise in India and the fact that big global brands were investing so heavily here. It was one of the best conversations I've ever had just explaining them more about our country as well as understanding what they feel about it. In the morning which would have been a usual American breakfast if I was staying somewhere else Vincent told me about a great bakery and he told me a key insight go at 6 30 a.m that's when they're baking their bread and believe me the entire street was smelling of that beautiful you know baking process and in the morning I had beautiful bread some desert and also yes I start my day with a desert and also some you know amazing coffee something that I would have never discovered ever in my life. This was a very very different travel experience. He also told me about a hidden gem a very small you know ice cream factory in San Francisco which had one of its favorites and in the evening I went there and tried it it was amazing for the seven times that I'd been to San Francisco I'd never heard about it but this time I was able to discover a hidden gem in the streets of San Francisco. This experience was very different and and this is what we will be talking about in more detail today and how this was much more magical than any other experience that I've had but let me take you to the beginning where it all started this is Nate, Joe and Brian the three co-founders of Airbnb about 10 years ago in fact in this picture they are all seated in a replica of the first ever Airbnb about three years ago these three gentlemen were staying in San Francisco they were budding entrepreneurs budding means they were not without a job so they obviously had some math problems with the money but they were budding entrepreneurs and the landlord of their apartment increased their rent by about 50 percent in one go so one of these guys had to decide to move out and it was very very difficult decision for that person what happened that week was two of these folks are designers one of them is a tech guy there was a big design conference happening in San Francisco and there were many people coming to attend that design conference and all the hotels in the city were so lucky these guys had an idea they had a place this is the real place the first ever Airbnb which came up there in San Francisco they said we have some space here why don't we just get people to stay with us and we will provide them with a bed and with some breakfast and we would be able to take them and help them see the city around what happened then was the problem was they did not have any beds so Joe who is one of the co-founders went and got some air beds out of the closet and inflated them and gave and put them in the space and they put a small website out inviting people that if you are coming to stay for this conference come and stay with us and we'll also help you with some breakfast but we'll also help you navigate the city if you are a new person in the city what happened then three people decided to come and join them and buy that particular space on the internet one of them was a lady from Boston a man from Utah and the India Connect started with Airbnb that day a man from India a design student called Amol from Mumbai these three people came and stayed with Brian Joe and Nate for that particular weekend they attended the design conference together but what they did was far more meaningful this was the start of the company the company that was called Air Bed and Breakfast this was the site that basically the founders put up basically inviting people to put up their space when they were big events in the city or letting people to just choose a host who were you know putting up their places on this platform to go and stay with them today what started as this particular company is now virtually the largest hospitality company in the whole world this is the headquarters in San Francisco there are more than 2000 people working in this office working towards one single mission and that's the mission I will talk about a little later so let me just explain for people what is Airbnb so Airbnb is an online platform that lets you book unique homes from local hosts so you can have authentic experiences when you travel very simple the way you would go book a hotel is something if you want to stay in a unique home you can go and stay with a host or you can rent an airplane and you could do this by using any medium that you prefer whether it's the web whether it's the mobile web or you can just download a mobile app on your phones and start browsing even now so if it is a whether it's an apartment for a night a castle for a week or a villa for a month Airbnb connects people to these unique experiences globally and what is now grown into a large global community across almost every country possible talking about you know growing community let's talk about our growth what started in 2009 in some pockets of united states because of those events coming in started mushrooming into a large organic community when people started to travel on it and started having great experiences so as a guest I stayed with a host I came back home and I said wow I could do this myself let me put my place again when more people came and stayed suddenly by 2016 and today we have more than four million plus homes on the network across 65,000 cities and more than 191 countries in India which is becoming one of the key emerging markets for Airbnb we have seen almost 200 percent year-on-year growth across all segments whether these are homes coming on the platform whether it's people using Airbnb to travel within this within the country or Indians traveling abroad today we have more than 25,000 homes across more than 100 cities in India overall on Airbnb we've had more than 250 million guest arrivals people who are having amazing experiences staying with locals in different parts of the world in different cities in different neighborhoods so that brings me to the topic of today reimagining travel let's see how do we travel today you know what we always see is that if I want to take a vacation or if I'm going to a new place a lot of my time goes in deciding on where to go and what do I do I read books I go read blogs I would download multiple apps and go through multiple you know stories that people have had or I would just go contact a few of my friends and say help me travel a lot of time today goes into planning of travel in fact there are times when planning takes more time than the usual travel itself and we believe that we need to fix this we need to make travel both magical as well as easy but how do we make it magical so we did a lot of research internally and we figured out that the magic is in the people and what we need to do is that when people go travel and interact with more people and immerse themselves in the local culture that's when the real magic happens so what we understand is that people are looking for memorable experiences or magical experiences that they would remember for the rest of their lives but if you look at glossy travel magazines or if you look at travel agents or even travel agencies all of them portray something like this a near perfect travel experience is that the reality no travel today is becoming far more commoditized it is a templatized way to travel you are basically doing you know just going to a place and not sensing and feeling the place we're just going there and doing things of a checklist that maybe someone else gave to you is it something that that we would want to see you know travel grow as we believe that at Airbnb we want people to start reimagining travel and when we say reimagining travel we want more and more people to start going to a place and immersing themselves in that local culture and meeting new people because that's where the magic happens in fact that's where a key brand campaign is based on where we are urging people that when they travel to a new city when they travel into a new place they should not just go you know city travel there or go there they should go and live there even if it is just for one night let's talk about a bit of the campaign strategy that is followed you know basically for this particular narrative that we have and I'll just talk a little bit it's a marketing contract so I thought I'll just pick up a little bit on on how we have gone about building this brand in India if you look at this building brand Airbnb in India is driven by consideration consideration is simple we want more and more people to start thinking of Airbnb when they're taking a trip either to you know a foreign country or even if it's a weekend getaway to a city in India what we believe is that you can build the consideration on three pillars comprehension relevance and brand presence when we talk about comprehension it's basically answering one simple question do even people even understand what Airbnb is what is this value proposition what is home sharing all about this is also a new way to travel when we talk about relevance we also want to ensure that do people feel Airbnb is the brand for them are we resonating with their insights is it what they would want to use when they travel abroad or even in India and most importantly how's our brand presence in India are we top of mind do people think about us do people talk about us when they're talking about our travel decision based on these three pillars we started our journey in India early last year and in fact it gained momentum early this year and we came with a 360 degree brand campaign you know sharing first talking about the comprehensive part of it don't go to Paris don't go to LA don't go to Tokyo live there when you Airbnb you have your own home read a book cook you know the stuff you normally do wherever you go don't go there even if it's just for a night again we've laid emphasis on making sure that people understood that there is a new way to travel it's about going and immersing yourself in the local culture it's about interacting with the local people it's about living in the beautiful homes and and we believe that particular promise of someone having a local immersive experience can hold true only when they're traveling on Airbnb and this is what comes to life with our four million plus host four million plus homes that we have on the platform a very vibrant host community that basically is the local expertise who bring them the travelers into their local communities and share local insights or the neighborhoods where the communities are dwelling so that people can immerse themselves in that particular location in a very very different way what we did again was to start understanding what are the key passion points that basically relate to our particular target audience and when we looked at those passion points it's about when people plan to travel in India what are the key themes that basically make help them make that decision so we did some internal research we did some we effort to some external research and we figured that these four passion points were very very relevant for our team and you know it's it's not anything of a surprise here when people are going to a new destination the thing about buying new things from there when you're going to a new destination about 47% of the people that we looked at as our target set said they would want to visit something cultural of that place maybe a monument maybe some something that that place is known for art food is something that you cannot take away from travelers a lot of people that we looked at wanted to immerse themselves in the local cuisine go try out local food even look at local ingredients and also start cooking it if possible and obviously lifestyle a lot of people today especially the Indian millennials want to travel to attend events maybe it's a concert maybe it's an event or or any other thing that resonates well with their lifestyle needs understanding these passion points we said what do people look up to when they travel tend to find people who are already brand friends who are already brand loyalists who are already Airbnb users who also embody some of these passion points in their daily livelihood and we focused on a small influencer strategy in India where we said let's find people who already love our brand people who already use us but who also reflect all of these in their daily life so we did something so for example fashion and shopping Sonam Kapoor was attending an IFA award in New York she wanted to extend her treatment stay in New York City to get you know just to understand the fashion trends there and also bring some bit of her fashion line or her sister's fashion line into that city she decided to stay in an Airbnb and was able to talk about at the entire experience of her staying in the city and also ensuring also sharing what she did from a fashion perspective in those places and she had an amazing experience staying in a loft in New York Vijay Anusha who's also someone that people follow a lot in the millennial generation decided to take a contest winners of Airbnb to unravel the underground fashion scene in Milan and people were able to look at new design secrets coming out of this when it came to food we had chef Manish Mehrotra who's known globally for his cuisine and dishes shared his insights as an Airbnb user on some of the best food experiences that he has had when he has traveled abroad and stayed with locals or also you know some tips of what to cook or what spices to carry when you're staying for longer periods in someone's home and if you want to cook that local food then we also had Miss Malini traveled within Goa and she went to all the restaurants and the places that her host Sucheta decided to share with her and she also discovered many hidden gems just like I did in San Francisco and then lastly we had Twinkle Khanna or Milan Soman this Milan was wanting to travel to Norway to see the northern lights just before the Pinkathon in India and he decided to want to immerse in the local culture by staying the local and he stayed in Norway then Twinkle wanted to reunite with a friend of hers and they both wanted to relive some parts of their history on the streets of Paris also discovering cultural and also discovering some highlights of that particular city all these people or influencers the way you call them embodied those specific passion points and they wanted to share their local stories share their entire story with more people and that's where we thought there was a great brand and you know influencer fit and we decided to go with these and this was hugely successful for India overall what we aim to do is to create more brand buzz by ensuring that we are part of the leading conversation across all the cultural point so whether it was Brian Chesty a CEO coming to India and launching experiences earlier this year with Shantanu and Nikhil who are ace fashion designers in fact there is an experience on the platform which you can also book now and spend an entire day with Shantanu and Nikhil understanding the art of couture from them basically from sketching how does the government go from the workshop to the ramp of Paris we also wanted to reimagine domestic travel we wanted people to not start looking at destinations with a different lens so earlier this month we launched something what we call the live there guide in goa this is basically a 32 page booklet which has curated homes by gauri khan who is a celebrated interior designer we also spoke to a number of influencers in goa people who call goa home or people who are hugely inspired by goa in their work streams to share their hidden points across multiple fashion fashion points that people you know think of when traveling to goa and that 32 booklet page booklet is the culmination of all of that we launched this earlier this year and we're already seeing some great traction and lastly talking about gauri khan we had Shahrukh and gauri after having a great Airbnb experience wanting to do this when they were traveling to LA they decided to stay in a in an Airbnb for 10 days only with with their entire family and Shahrukh went on to twitter to thank Airbnb for a great experience the idea for us was to get into the key popular conversations across key cultural points in India whether it's lifestyle whether it's fashion whether it's bollywood or whether it's just tour play a new lens towards looking at travel but Airbnb is not just about guests it's also about hosts in fact if you look at India hospitality is intrinsic to our culture we've been brought up by the saying in Sanskrit it says and we have always welcomed friends or friends or relatives or relatives of friends into our homes for many years so not only does Airbnb help you live like a local when you're traveling but it also gives you a great opportunity to be a micro entrepreneur earn some extra income but also showcase the beautiful culture of your country and when we started thinking about what is when it comes to the biggest cultural moment for India what what bigger moment than a big festival so this Diwali we wanted to showcase the joy of living in an Airbnb by focusing more on the host and the guest relationship especially when someone is coming to our country and wanting to immerse in the vibrant beautiful culture that we have especially during the festivity so we looked at Diwali as a key moment and we launched a campaign for Diwali this year that's the masala chai it has some cardamom and a ginger in it I taste the ginger it's really good I'll show you what the markets look like on the day of Diwali we would love to have you celebrate with us sweets being sold the will of light get rid of all the darkness in our lives the hours just celebrate the victory of koto we live on this creative asset basically kind of was a summation for everything that I talked about today people traveling staying with locals immersing themselves in the local culture becoming a part of that particular family and enjoying a place in a very different way in fact you know I talked about a company's mission a little while back but I'll detail that out round people talk about technology you know taking away jobs AI taking away job functions or that having a large impact on the way we do business here we believe till the time people and people are connecting with each other or what we see where magic happens in fact Airbnb has pioneered the art of people powered hospitality till the time people are interacting with each other you know we cannot be impacted by anything magic would always happen at that particular point of time and our company's mission is that we want to create a world where everyone can belong anywhere irrespective of who they are where they come from or what do they do and that mission drives our work forward across the world as well as in India thank you thank you thank you very much Mr. Bajaj I think we have some time to take some questions so okay we have a question that side do we have a mic that side a host how do you identify them is there an ecosystem what about the security and safety of the guests etc so and what is how does the revenue flow there's a company I'm sure the company gets some part of it and sure I'll explain that in detail first of all to your first point trust and safety is critical to what we do in fact what we believe is that there should be no strangers on the platform so what we have done is we've created multiple tools that are available for hosts and guests across the world as well as in India which basically talks about verified profiles so when you log on to the portal and you're registered as the user you have to upload a government issued ID based on certain details that you share you go through a verification process and once that is done you start becoming a host on an active host on the platform we've also built in multiple trust related tools for example we verify phone numbers emails social profiles all of that is linked on the profile but what is core to our system or any marketplace is the review mechanism so what happens is when a guest stays with the host and the host hosts a particular guest they both have to review each other after the end of the stay and people can see those reviews on the platform it is compulsory you review the guest the host reviews you and over a period of time what we see is that people build a reputation online and what we do see is we using machine learning and other technologies we may show that we are looking at each and every review and if there is a certain promise of hospitality which is wavering down or people are saying this is not what I expected we start looking at corrective actions onto that host to an extreme that we may also take that host off the platform all these tools brindle a lot of trust across the system we also ensure that there is a robust payment system so we keep the money with as Airbnb and only once the the guest is satisfied with the services that we pass the money on to the host so the guest can live with the satisfaction that is something were to go wrong or if the promise was not delivered of the hospitality that was offered I can get my money back and the same way the host also has to deliver on that promise because as I said if they do not demonstrate the hospitality that they're promising we can take them off the platform in fact we also have a system to reward our best performing host by something called a super host status so people who exhibit great hospitality stay after stay get a new status called Hooper host in fact Vincent the host that I stayed with in San Francisco was a super host and you can choose to stay with a super host on the platform apart from that we also provide what we call as a host guarantee which is a 6.6 crore rupee insurance for all hosts that are on the platform so in case something were to go wrong to your property if you're a host and things can happen there could be families staying in the apartment and if you know something breaks that insurance policy covers it so it gives the peace of mind to the host as well apart from that we have a 24 by 7 trust and safety and call center team available at any corner of the world in any time zone for any assistance that you would want to have in fact that's the reason more than 250 million people have you know stayed on air bnbs across the world and had fair and positive experiences talking about revenue yes we have a very transparent commission system when you become a host on the platform and you want to put your home you will get 97% of whatever you charge or your room act so the flexibility of pricing is totally yours we take a 3% card on the host commission for all the facilities that are talked about that we provide plus what we also do is when the guest is booking we take a small percentage of commission from the guest as a service facilitation fee which is basically which could vary between anywhere between 5 to 10 cent depending on the length of stay the place of stay and the kind of I hope that answers your question all right thank you I think we will have to end the interest of time we'll have to actually stop the question answers but I'm sure Mr. Bajaj is here thank you let's give him a round of applause and let me also invite Ms. Deepa Bhatia strategy consultant to Pitara TV to kindly join us on stage to hand over a small momentum to Mr. Bajaj thank you very much once again at this moment we put a round of applause one more time ladies and gentlemen thank you thank you very much