Name of your website?Bharathomestay.com - Home stay in India made easy.
Your name?
Deepa Baruah
Your Location (city, etc)
New Delhi
Please give us a short summary of your website?
Bharat Homestay is the first India Homestay portal where anyone -- both guests and hosts -- can post their homestay requirements. And all for FREE. Bharat Homestay is a free meeting place for guests and hosts of India homestays. So whether you are a guest or host looking for / wanting to advertise a homestay accommodation, apartment on rent, budget homestay or a house in India, this is where your search ends!
What inspired you to launch your own website?
We created the portal (bharathomestay.com) more out of a sense of curiosity than as a business-generating model. On a recent business trip to Germany, my colleague stayed as a homestay guest and enjoyed every moment of it! Not only did he get a taste (literally!) of the German way of life, but he also didn’t miss home as much as he thought he would.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
In 2007
How did you decide on a name for your website?
India was formerly known as Bharat. So the name Bharat Homestay in other words mean India Homestay
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
The website is a meeting place for the homestay guest and homestay host. Anyone can come, register and place his requirement for free
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
the homestay sector in India is very unorganised. Our goal is to bring them together to a single platform
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
Frankly we have not broken even. But gradually people are noticing our efforts and hopefully this year we expect to break-even.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
I would like to make the site more dynamic for sure
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
If you are talking about manpower...yes we can keep up to any pressure.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
Our previous host provider. I will not take its name but it was indeed a bad experience.
What has been your biggest challenge?
To convince a small homestay host about the benefits of going online
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
High value content...information
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
Not at all. We had expected a slow but staedy response and that's what we have received. I thank God and my dedicated team for this
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
Currently all my employees with the exception of the offline marketing team work as freelancers. So hopefully this will keep all of us on our toes to perform and excel. The project is more about passion than of business so I dont doubt we will have any lax in our zeal to out-perform all competition.
What is your website address?
Bharathomestay.com - Home stay in India made easy.
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