Jay: This week’s show guest is Taro Amornched, who is the cofounder and CEO of Take Me Tour. Take Me Tour is an online platform that matches travelers who are looking for an authentic, local experience in Thailand with local experts. The traveler can browse, chat, check, and confirm their trip directly from the website. Taro, welcome to the show.

Taro: Thank you.

Jay: I want to start off with a little bit of background of yourself. Where are you from? What did you do in the past? And what led you to become an entrepreneur?

Taro: Sure. Hello, everyone. This is Taro. Basically, my background was pretty diverse from what I’m doing today. So I got a master’s degree in robotics engineering. So basically, I think 10 years ago, I started my career as a research engineer. So back then, I was coding. I was teaching robots how to see, how to understand picture images.

Right after I graduated, I actually got a chance to start working in Singapore as a software engineer, of course. Then once I started in Singapore, I just got an idea about tourism since… I’m sure everyone likes to travel. So one of the ideas just came up. So I started Take Me Tour about five years ago as a hobby. But then I just kept going on. Once things got set up… My whole career has been in academics. I don’t really have any knowledge in business at all. So that’s when I decided to submit a job application to Google. Fortunately, I got accepted, and I worked in Google Singapore for about three years, mainly in advertising and marketing.

And then after that, Take Me Tour got funding, so I quit, and jumped right on the Take Me Tour journey and working it full time.

Jay: Wow. That’s a great story. And you’re from Thailand originally.

Taro: Yes. From Bangkok, Thailand.

Jay: And did you go to school there or abroad?

Taro: I got my bachelor in Thailand, and I got my master’s degree from Europe.

Jay: I see. You have a very interesting backstory. First of all, I am very happy to have you on the show. I love Thailand. It’s one of my favorite destinations to go visit. I live in Hong Kong, but as you know, there’s a lot of Hong Kong people that love to go to visit Thailand. So I think that something like Take Me Tour is particularly interesting for someone like me, because I love travel as well.

When you decided to move to Singapore, and you were working at Google. Is that right?

Taro: Yes.

Jay: The Take Me Tour idea and the concept, that was just sort of an idea because you love to travel yourself, and you wanted to do something within your home country. Was there any sort of catalyst that made you come up with this concept?

Taro: Yeah. The thing is that back then, when I started my master’s degree, I was in a program called Erasmus Mundus back then. So I had to move around to several countries. I actually moved to study in five different countries for my two-year courses. So every time I moved, people dropped me a message. “Hey, Taro, show me around.” “Hey, Taro, what is there to do in Vienna?” “Hey, Taro, are you in Austria right now? I’m dropping by next week. Let’s meet up.” Things like that.

And then that actually just dinged me off. Hey, why do people keep asking me, starting from friends, close friends, families, and then going to friend and friends — all of that — friend of friend of friends. Then it actually dinged me at bit that actually. When people go to new countries or new locations, they’re actually looking for the people who live there or people who stay there just because they have more local history. They have more knowledge about what’s happened over there. Although they could go to the mall, but they just prefer to hear it from the locals or people who live there.

Jay: That’s a good point. If I just think about my travel experiences, I don’t travel as much now anymore as I used to because I have three kids now. It takes a lot for me to travel with the family. And then I travel a little bit for work, but definitely not as much as when I was younger. But just for recreationally, when I used to travel as a tourist or this sort of thing, it would take me a good couple of weeks of research. It’s the same sort of thing that you said, Taro. You just ask friends, “Have you ever been to Bangkok? Give me your recommendations.”

And then everyone has a different recommendation, and usually everyone is a tourist. So they just kind of give you their experience and what they think. It’s always different, and you never know what the quality level is. Some people have very high standards when it comes to dining and hotels and activities, and other people are okay eating street food. So I’ve found that there is a massive variance. And then you, of course, would research the books, the guidebooks, and then they give you a completely different idea.

I think it’s a pretty interesting concept. So let’s dive right in. Let’s talk about Take Me Tour. Give us the basics of what the company is, what it does, and how it helps the tour experience.

Taro: Sure. Basically, Take Me Tour is like a marketplace for local tours. You just come to Take Me Tour. You browse itinerary tours, experiences, that are offered by local, people who live there. It’s like having a friend, some people you can trust to show you around the cities. And this is the experience that we would like to offer to travelers.

Jay: I see. And you guys are currently only in Thailand?

Taro: We started from Thailand. Right now we’re in Thailand, and we started expanding to Cambodia just last month, and then we’re expanding to Myanmar, hopefully by next month.

Jay: So the basic… It’s a local expert that will take you around. And so what are the… Walk me through the user experience, if you will. Is it a website that you go in and you browse different packages? How does it work? How do you determine how long you want the guide for? What’s the pricing and that sort of thing?

Taro: For traveler’s experience, once you enter the website, you just select what cities you’re visiting. Right now, it’s the largest marketplace of local choice in Thailand. So we have more than 20,000 local experts from 55 cities. So basically, we start from the city that you’re visiting. It can be Bangkok, Chiang Mai, or some other city that you’re visiting. Then there will be a list of experiences categorized by categories or types. Especially these days, we’re going to ask you where you’re from and because we would like to personalize the experience based on your behavior or your preference. So the more you browse through the website, you will keep seeing more related tours that you may like.

And once you’ve found the one that you like, you can either check their availabilities calendar, or you can chat with the local expert first, or you can just book them directly.

Jay: Are they all within one day?

Taro: I forgot to mention that. Every one is one-day tours or one-day experiences which means… Because these days, we’re tackling what we call FIT travelers, Free and Independent Travelers. So those are the people who book their own flight because there are a lot of offers online. They book their own accommodations. They’re looking for things to do. Our offers are for one day, which means you can buy… If you want to go several days, you can book several tours. But every one of them are completed within one day.

Jay: I see. That’s pretty cool. And then, of course, the different experiences have different time frames. It could be a shorter one. It could be just a walk through an area and then something else longer could be maybe a full-day tour or a hike or something like that. Is that right?

Taro: Yeah. Definitely. It starts from very early morning. For our culture, in the morning, we offer food to the monks, so you can actually attend that from 6 A.M. During the day, you could go to the fresh market, come back, and have a home-cooked food with, like, my mom, for example. At night, you can actually have a pub crawl. You can have a sweet food too in Chinatown, so those are the experiences. Depending on what type of them, you start and end at different times.

Jay: Okay. That’s very cool. How about language support? Obviously your tour guides, experts, English must be pretty—

Taro: It’s a must.

Jay: There’s also a large mainland Chinese population that travels. There’s Japanese people that love Southeast Asia. I know Koreans love to travel as well. Do you have language support for the other languages?

Taro: Everyone, all the local experts speak Thai and English. So we have been focusing on the English-speaking travel in the past two years. But starting this year, we will start focusing more on the third language. Which mean, right now, if you enter the website, you can see a local expert who can speak Japanese, Chinese, and French, as a starting point. So we keep adding more on the platform to actually handle more, especially Chinese. Almost one-third of my travelers visiting Thailand are Chinese travelers.

Jay: Yes, of course. That’s definitely an area of growth that I think will actually significantly help your revenue model. Let me just walk through the user experience. I’m actually on your site right now, and I see a bunch of different experiences. Let’s say I’m going to Bangkok this weekend with my wife, and I want to experience one of these. It says right on here, four hours, seven hours — how long the experience lasts. There’s price listed next to it. I see the price has been converted to Hong Kong dollars. Is that price all-inclusive of any sort of tips and this sort of thing?

Taro: For the tip, we include the tips, which means, for us, you don’t really have to put the pressure on you to have to pay tips or anything adding on. Not at all. However, we have a price condition for the other things. For example, we have it for if you go to any of the tours, there will be price conditions which tells you that this price already included transportation, included admission ticket, included, if any, meal are included. It depends on each of the tours, because each of these experiences are mostly set by the local people themselves. Some of them are comfortable having a meal included so they can walk you through the whole experience without asking you for anything. Some of them prefer to have meals excluded because they’re not sure if you’re going to eat a lot or if you prefer one or another type of food.

Jay: Right. That’s a good point. I think, for me, the tipping part is oftentimes the most…not awkward, but it’s a question mark for a lot of people because you’re not sure. Different cultures have different customs on how you’re supposed to tip and whether you are, whether you’re not. Some cultures, it’s rude to leave a tip. So I like having everything included when I go on an experience.

I also see that you have, obviously, a social element here where people can rate and review the tours. As far as custom-ability, is there a way that, in addition to these experiences here, let’s say I want to do something bespoke. Is it possible for me to request that, and then you guys come up with a price? Let’s say I wanted to do a longer walking tour or a walking tour plus something else. Is that possible?

Taro: Yeah. Definitely.  usually, if it’s just a small customized add-on on your existing tour… Let’s say, for example, if I start choosing street food tour in Chinatown. And then I have would like to extend to the nearby market because I have read some reviews online, and this is cool. I would like to see that too. If it is something… That’s why we have a chat functions. You can even chat with the local people right before you make a booking. Most of the time, they’re okay with that.

But if you’re looking for the complete customizations, we do have that as well. However, you might not find that easily because we try to direct you to each of the tours as a starting point. But after you browse the website for a while, if you detect that you’re not selecting anything, then we will pop up, “Do you need customizations?” This is where you can just type a whole bunch of requests that might be very specific.

One of our interesting customizations in the past, this was a Singaporean traveler. He’s also have interested in some kind of a Buddhism amulet. So he would like to have the local people show him around five different temples — he has an exact list — and just meet the monk there. He just put the name there, and then we customized it because we have 20,000 of them. So pretty much we could cover most everything you would like to do. But a different story.

Jay: I appreciate that flexibility because sometimes these stock experiences aren’t for everyone.

Can you walk us through the payment side of things? How does it work? How do you guys make money, that sort of thing.

Taro: That is very, very important. We make the money off the commissions. So we are running on a commission-based model or the booking fee. Basically, for example, if the local people creating the itinerary and then they say, I would like to get, for example, a thousand Thai baht for this tour. And then we’re going to list it, and we add around 10 to 20% commission on top of that as a booking fee. And that is, actually, our main source of revenue.

Although, these days, we’re actually expanding our revenue stream to other stuff like merchandising products, which means, we have been asking people… Because we’ve seen people spend the time in Thailand — five to seven days — and then they book our tour for about two to three days. And then we ask them, “What did you do in the rest of the time?”

They said they go to the museum; Koreans; they go to the theme park. So that’s why we started cross-selling the tickets, attraction tickets, to them so they can actually… You would like to get an end-to-end experience for them. So right now, we start offering tourism cars right from the airport, airport pick up, any other stuff that they need during their trip.

Jay: I see. That’s clever. If I’m undecided, and I decide to select a one-day tour with my wife, I have to pay for it right here on the site first and book it?

Taro: Yeah. The key is that you pre-pay them. So you pay the full amount. However, we keep that amount. So this is the key. We keep that amount safe with us, and we only release that to the local expect only after the end of the tours and you confirm with us. If you just book another tour at the end of the day, there will be an email asking you have you met this person? Have you actually met and everything is going well? You like it? You leave the review, and then the money will be released.

Jay: That makes sense. It’s almost like you hold it in escrow until you get confirmation that the… Got it.

Taro: Sometimes — it rarely happens — but sometimes, for example, there’s very heavy rain, and you don’t meet each other. So at the end of the day, you leave a review, like I would like to hold the money because I didn’t actually meet that person, and I would like to reschedule. And then we manage that because we still hold the money, the payment that you made.

Jay: Okay. Got it. That makes sense. This brings us actually into my next question, obviously, which is quality control. So whether it be finding these local experts and when they onboard to your platform, how trustworthy are they? Obviously, Thai people are probably the most friendly people I have ever met in the world, so you might not have issues. But for safety and for insurance and this sort of thing, you never know. What measures do you have in place for that? And if an experience goes terribly wrong for some reason, what recourse is there?

Taro: These are very, very good questions and probably one of the first questions travelers have in mind before they make a booking.

First of all, I put it into two aspects — quality and security concerns. For the security concern, we do not compromise it at all, which means we have very strict security measurements. We’re on par with the global standards. We have the ID card check. We have the bank account check. We have the criminal record clean, and we check all those things to make sure who they are, and they are actually a legitimate person that we can at least find them where they are. So that is the security part.

However, for quality, if you think about it, it’s very subjective. Some people might like this one but not care for another person. It’s very, very subjective. Also, actually, the websites Take Me Tour keeps telling people, “Hey, this tour is good. Book it.” You don’t really believe me. But if it’s hundreds of people leaving reviews that this tour is good, then we categorize them by the countries of origin. So there are reviews from American travelers; reviews from Hong Kong people; there are reviews from Singaporeans. So you actually go read the reviews.

So for the quality, why the review would be the main key component here, to actually ensure the qualities. However, for the new tours and new experiences that list on the website, we work with a network of bloggers, which means we have bloggers…they love to come to Thailand. So they come to Thailand; they go on a tour for free. In exchange, they take a nice photo, a nice video, and give a review. So that is actually our quality screening assurance on top of our own team that are curating them.

However, your question about what happens if things go wrong… This is the point of why we hold the money with us. We have to keep the money secure. In case anything goes wrong, we can still make a full refund back to travelers. They don’t lose anything. This is the point of having Take Me Tour as a middle person or a platform, making sure both sides — the travelers and the local people — they’re both happy with us.

Jay: Absolutely. You always have to be prepared for them. They do happen, even large companies like Airbnb, every once a year, you hear a horror story about it. You just have to have these things in place, for sure.

Taro: I forgot to mention, in all the bookings through the platform, we have accident insurance covered. So not only the travelers but also with our local expert because they are part of it. We consider them a partner. So even the local that go on the tour, they’re individuals. So if they accidentally get hit by the car, we have the insurance cover them as well.

Jay: Sure. Very smart. Let’s quickly talk about what you have in store for the future. How many cities currently are you servicing? You said you’re looking at Cambodia to expand to. Tell us some of your growth plans for the coming year.

Taro: Sure. Right now, we could say we’re the largest marketplace of local tours in Thailand, covering 55 cities in Thailand already. So our plans in the very short term is we would like to still continue dominating the Thai market because I think it’s very strategic in terms of the inbound tourism in the region. Thailand alone consists of around 50% of the whole inbound tourism in Southeast Asia, so it makes sense to continue our strength in the market. However, we keep expanding too.

I think what we specialize is to developing countries in Southeast Asia where the needs of the local people are. So we start going for Cambodia for very basic reasons that we go after our previous customers. I keep sending them emails like “apart from Thailand, I know you’re hopping around the region. What are the other countries you’re visiting?” And about 70% of them answered that they’re going to Cambodia and that is a very obvious choice for us, that we’re going to Cambodia to start expanding in Cambodia.

So the goal for us, by this year, we’re going to go… We’ve already been in Cambodia. We’re going to expand to Myanmar and Laos by 2018. And we’re going to try to cover more of the developing countries in Southeast Asia by 2019.

Jay: That’s exciting. We’ll definitely be looking out for that. I want to switch gears a little bit here, Taro, and talk about some of your achievements here. You’ve obviously done extremely well. As a startup, you’ve caught the eye of several industry players. You won a couple of awards recently, one of which you told me was like the Oscars award of the industry, and also you were recognized by Forbes 30 under 30. Could you please tell us about those awards and what they mean to you?

Taro: Sure. Let’s start with the first one. It’s called a APICT award — Asia Pacific ICT Award. Honestly, I didn’t know that at the beginning. But then when we got recognized, it’s like people in the ICT industry have been calling this an Oscar, or ultimate goal for people who are working in the software industry. It actually means a lot to us because, in Thailand — it’s an APIC-level competition — and Thailand has been very, very known for tourism. However, we didn’t win this award for about five, six years. And we actually got that award and then once in the past, like five to six years. So that means a lot to us, that we could actually bring travel and hospitality categories to Thailand again. That’s why this means a lot to us.

For the Forbes 30 under 30, it come pretty much unexpected. I’m not really a very rich, successful guy, but when I read their criteria, that means a lot to be. Because, as I say, the criteria for honoraries making the list include did they shape disruption in their field and likelihood of changing their field over the next half century. So that means a lot because I’m glad that the committees see that what we try to do at Take Me Tour could possibly change the field, the travel industry at least in the next half century.

Jay: Absolutely. Congratulations on both of those accolades. I think Thailand is often known for its tourism. And people go there… I know it’s a very popular destination, especially for people here in Hong Kong and China and stuff like that. So for you to win that sort of award in tourism and hospitality but not with… Traditionally it’s like hotels that win these types of awards. So I think that speaks volumes for your company and the work you’re doing there.

You also recently, I know, were part of the Alibaba e-founders program. Can you tell us a little bit about that program? What was that all about? What did you learn? Give us some details of that.

Taro: This is the program at I recently joined. It’s called eFounders Fellowship Program. It’s part of the Alibaba and UNCTAD collaborations. Basically, I really like it, in a way, because I could actually take around 37 founders, if I’m right, though all of them are CEO or cofounder in a startup in Southeast Asia who run marketplace, to be in one place in Hangzhou at Alibaba headquarters. In two weeks, I’ve been… I think we have learned a lot on how to build our ecosystem, or platform in China. So this was really, I would say, eye opening because I probably don’t really know much about Chinese previously — the Chinese market and how things go. But when I’m part of the program, I can learn how Alibaba is building the whole ecosystem starting from ecommerce, payment, tourism from scratch, from day one, and their views on building up an ecosystem, really building up an ecosystem. And that actually, when I come back to Thailand, I had gotten a lot of learning from that because that made us very certain because what we tried to tell ourselves is that we are not really a tour company. We try to make a platform that matches two people as a marketplace, as a platform that matches the needs of two sides — the local expert and the traveler, together. And we learn how to build them from scratch, from Alibaba history, experiences.

Jay: Very interesting. So it wasn’t as much of how to penetrate the Chinese market. It was more about building community, building an ecosystem wherever you might be operating your business and using that as a basis to grow your business. Is that right?

Taro: Yeah, definitely. It’s more like a bigger picture than just learning how Alibaba works, how Taobao works. That’s definitely part of the program, however, I think the whole big picture was how to build up an ecosystem of ecommerce, of payment, of tourism, actually has a larger impact.

Jay: That’s fantastic. Taro, as we look to wrap up here — and again, thanks so much for your time. I’ve learned a lot today about your company, about Thailand. I’m glad that we were able to connect. I have two final questions for you. It’s really one. As someone that has come up from an engineering background, you’ve worked in a large corporation — albeit Google — and then taking the entrepreneurial leap, and you’re at a point where you’re seeing some success. The proof of concept is there. I’m sure you’re getting traction; you’re winning these awards. For startup founders that are looking to do the same thing, maybe follow in your footsteps, that might be working at another company, and they’re doing something like a Take Me Tour on the side at nights, what’s one piece of advice that you could give and leave for my audience listening in, if they’re an aspiring entrepreneur?

Taro: If I could give a piece of advice for an entrepreneur who would probably be about to make a bid decision in their life, to be an entrepreneur or starting their own startup… I would say… I say, things are tough. It’s really tough. But find the things you’re really passionate about because that will probably be the only thing that keeps you moving, at least in the early phase because things that you see a lot of people have been doing might seem very tempting, very easy from the outside, but once you get your hands on the startup, there are a lot of things along the way. So just find things that you’re passionate on, and then that will be the thing that will keeps you awake in the morning, keep you working at night.

Jay: That’s great advice. At the beginning, it’s always fun, and it’s exciting. But when that excitement and the fun wears off, and you start hitting roadblocks and challenges, you’re absolutely right, Taro, you have to be passionate about it. It has to be something that you just want to do, whether you’re making money at the time or not and whether you’re successful at the time or you’re stumbling or going through roadblocks, if you’re not passionate about it, then you’re just going to end up giving up. So great piece of advice.

Final question, Taro, is where can people find you, follow you, and connect with you to learn a little bit more either about you yourself, personally, or Take Me Tour?

Taro: For Take Me Tour, you can just simply follow our social media. We’re on Facebook. We’re on Twitter. We’re on Instagram as TakeMeTour. For myself, I’m not as much in social media guy as I used to in the past few years just because I’m too busy. But I’m still active on Facebook, so you can just find my name, like Taro Amornched on Facebook. So you can find me easily.

Jay: Fantastic. You know what’s funny, Taro? For startup founders — I’m an investor as well — and I actually like it when they’re not all over social media all the time because I actually know that they’re just head down and focused and working on the company, which is working on the investment. So it’s not a bad thing to not be too much out there on social media.

Thanks so much. It’s been such a pleasure, Taro. We are looking forward to tracking your progress, and we wish you the best of luck.

Taro: Sure. Thank you. It’s my pleasure to be speaking with you as well.

Jay: Take care now.

Taro: Thank you. Bye.

Jay: Bye.