Everybody likes to travel for leisure time or work. Traveling helps to remove the monotony and helps to refresh the mind. Some people don't want to travel due to tons of hassles. But well-planned and organized travel management can make your travel experience easier.

We face a lot of problems when it comes to travel. The biggest problem is ticket booking and hotel booking, which is very time-consuming as you need to research to find the best deal. But with the advent of technology, we have been able to do so much more easily over the years. Bangladeshi travel tech platforms are coming up with this facility quite well. One of them is the popular online travel solution "GoZayaan," which has introduced itself as an online travel agency. Moreover, they are updating themselves a lot over time.

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What is GoZayaan?

GoZayaan, a Bangladeshi online one-stop travel solution. This platform comes with all kinds of service facilities, from booking your travel tickets to booking your hotel room. GoZayaan originally started its journey in 2017 by targeting air ticketing services. Their main service was to provide domestic and international air ticket facilities. But later, they have been assisting their clients in visa processing and hotel booking as well as providing offers, discounts and coupon facilities to Bangladeshi travel enthusiasts.

How Does GoZayaan Work?

Anyone can easily avail of services like flight, hotel, bus, visa, travel loan through GoZayaan's website. You can easily select the city, hotel, and area according to your choice. Check-in and check-out time, how many rooms you need, or how many people you have, you can easily set everything on their website and find your place according to your preference.

For bus service, you can also see through the website how many seats are vacant in which bus and at what time your preferred bus is available. This popular platform also shares and hosts different tour plans targeting different travel seasons.

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Tour plans make it much easier for anyone to cover different places in Bangladesh. One of the most valuable features of the GoZayaan travel solution platform is the price range that allows you to set packages to suit your budget. Additionally, you can customize the package to suit you. This whole process is very easy and can be done in a few minutes through their website.

In addition, the platform provides various offer packages to customers through joint campaigns with various travel host platforms, travel-based bloggers, and resorts in Bangladesh. GoZayaan has been working closely with local airlines, inter-city bus firms, hotels, and tour operators to make online travel services more popular.

During the Covid 19 pandemic, due to the stagnation of the tourism industry, GoZayaan decided to focus on local tourism. And the platform has achieved 5 times growth in the last 12 months.

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Founder of GoZayaan

This popular platform is founded by Ridwan Hafiz, a young man with an engineering degree from BUET. His whole family lives in America, and he also had a plan to settle there. But at one point, he felt that if he left the country after studying, nothing would be done for the country. Hence, he wanted to do something for the country. Ridwan Hafiz founded GoZayaan on August 10, 2017. This travel tech platform has now gained a lot of confidence among the Bangladeshi people.

GoZayaan is Ridwan Hafeez's second startup. He started a digital marketing agency, 'Analyze Bangladesh Limited,' 13 years ago with friend Sumit Saha while they were studying in BUET. Now, it is one of the largest digital marketing agencies in the country and has expanded to six countries around the world.

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Fundings, Achievements, and Challenges

GoZayaan's biggest challenge was to bring traditional customers to the technology platform. Another challenge they had at first was that customers needed a credit card to get GoZayaan's services. But now, it is no longer limited to just credit cards. Now you can pay BRAC, City Amex, Dhaka Bank, EBL, LankaBangla, Standard Chartered, bKash, and Nagad. At present, they run their corporate office in Gulshan, and according to the information provided on LinkedIn, they have more than 50 employees. At present, they are serving 5 lakh people per month.

In October 2021, GoZayaan got its funding for the first time. The travel tech platform has raised $2.6 million in a seed round led by the global investment platform Wavemaker Partners, one of the largest investors in the technology sector in Southeast Asia. Investors include 1982 Ventures, Century Oak Capital and Iterative. BRAC Osiris Impact Ventures and OS Ventures have invested in Go Zion in the pre-seed round. Initially focusing on the Bangladesh market, GoZayaan plans to use the new funding to enhance their user experience, attract new talent and expand their customer base and travel service network.

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GoZayaan also received the Champion Award in the Tourism and Hospitality category at the 2018 BASIS National ICT Awards.

Recently in February 2022, GoZayaan acquired a Pakistani travel startup, 'Find My Adventure.' After four months of negotiations, Bangladeshi GoZayaan reached a final agreement to buy the Pakistani startup company in the middle of last month. GoZayaan has acquired Find My Adventure for $3.5 million, and it will now be operated under the name GoZayaan.

Previously GoZayaan registered in Singapore in 2019, two years after the start of the journey. Ridwan Hafiz did not take any money from Bangladesh to buy a Pakistani startup. In this case, DST Global, one of the world's largest investors in the startup sector, has invested in expanding GoZayaan's business. Alexander Ritweiger, the founder of Nordstar Partners and Payback, is also helping GoZayaan. After purchasing Find My Adventure, GoZayaan will have the opportunity to serve 5% of the world's population.

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Final Words

Despite the sea, mountains, and other more natural attractions in Bangladesh, very few foreign tourists come to visit Bangladesh. That is why GoZayaan wants to change the entire ecosystem of the Bangladeshi travel industry. 

GoZayaan wants to build them as a big brand in Bangladesh that will move globally in the future. Moreover, they also want to take Bangladesh one step further on the path to industrial prosperity. We hope that Bangladeshi one-stop travel solutions GoZayaan will encourage more similar startups in the country and other parts of the world.

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