The AI Technologist Parag Arora's first startup was a consumer texting application named Plustxt, which was sold to Paytm in 2013
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Parag Arora's entrepreneurial innings began soon after his graduation from IIT Delhi. After working for a mobility tech firm back in 2008, he tried and failed at two startup ideas in education as well as travel-tech. In 2011, he started his mobility-tech journey as an entrepreneur. His first startup was a consumer texting application named Plustxt, which was sold to Paytm in 2013. Post this, he started traveling a lot and realized the big need of messaging for brands to interact with their customers.
Sharing his initial thoughts, Arora says, "As a guest in a resort, I would be so tempted to message a butler when around a swimming pool for a drink and it was so clear there is a huge problem to be solved." At the same time, he started talking to his now partner, Jasen Lew who had previous entrepreneurial experiences starting and scaling businesses. Jasen and Parag started Glowing,io - a brand created to put smiles on the faces of guests in the travel and hospitality industries.
Glowing.io is an omni-channel and AI messaging platform that automates all conversations and tasks for hotels to allow premium interactive experiences for guests, reducing significant transactional hassle and costs for the hotel. Glowing.io was selected to be a part of the world's most prestigious accelerator – Ycombinator, based in Silicon Valley. So far, the startup boasts a client list of globally recognized luxury brands, including Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Rosewood Hotels & Resorts, Capella and others.
Talking about enhancing its offerings, Arora says, "We recently launched another product built on top of our messaging infrastructure, Dailyhealthcheck.com to solve a big problem for in-person organizations looking to reopen after COVID-19. We have helped many different types of organizations – from private schools to pet hotels – safely open their businesses and providing peace of mind to employees and visitors." The company was founder bootstrapped and later raised a multimillion dollar seed round. Right now, they are not looking to raise another round, but are super focused on growth not only within travel and hospitality, but other industries. Talking about the biggest halt 2020 brought especially to players serving the hospitality sector, Arora mentions, "We got super focused on finding opportunities between challenges and launched Dailyhealthcheck.com to help organizations open their facilities.
Later, messaging became supercritical to open any hotel or resort to provide an end-toend touchless experience. We have quickly rebounded from a dip in the second quarter of 2020, and now setting record engagement numbers on our platform month-over-month since summer of 2020." Back in its growth mode, the startup expects to continue its high-growth trajectory.
