Ctrip with such a market domination and lack of intermediary choice, one is bound to have high % of repeat customers. It is case study by itself why there are just two players addressing the estimated 1 million room China fragmented lodging opportunity.

First their revenue is cash collection business for Ctrip in China..so imagine the controls involved in collecting about US $ 90 million in cash. China is today a cash market for services. The micro economic structures are stil to catch up with the macro structures.

Secondly each booking requires Ctrip to call each hotel to check if the customer has checked in and paid. Ctrip doesn't collect a cent upfront for 97% of hotel bookings. So think of the complexity at the back end

Thirdly - It is a call centre business and e-mail inquiry business. So to sell 6 million rooms with lack of automation requires an incredible operational setup.

Currently in Chennai visiting Family. I am always amazed by the number of magazines that flow through the house in a month. Time, Newsweek, Business World, Business Today, Outlook, India Today, Week, Frontline, Good Housekeeping, Cine Blitz, tamil magazines..

Now every three days, the lending library visits the house and gives 4 magazines so in a month about 40 magazne flow through the house. The average cost of each magazine is about 30 ( Time, Newsweek skew the costs). So in a month there is about Rs 1,200 worth of magazine content but my parents pay only Rs 150 to this libarary.

For a moderately curios individual this is incredible value. There is no way I would buy 4 issues of Time, Newsweek, India Today, Outlook, Business World  etc every month. It would cost too much and take too much time. Also from a subscription point o f view I would maybe subsrcibe to one or two magazine.

But in Mumbai, New Delhi I have not come across this concept at all..To me it seems a no brainer to a customers.

I can almost see the HEADLINE:

Read Rs 1200 worth of wide range of magazines for only  Rs 200per month  

We should get a youg enterprising person to setup this business and we provide seed capital. We can also build a website where consumers can select their magazine of choice. Market this through the paperwallas and also local editions of newspapers. But this can spread through word of mouth because of the value.

So for each area we identify a young enterprising under privileged person to drive this business.  Even if he gets 100 families that is 20,000 rupees. So those hundred families need to be broken into 5 units of 20 families each. In each unit you circulate the magazines worth Rs 1200 so the expenditure for magazines is Rs 6000 per moth. Marketing and administrative costs would be about 3 to 4 k..So he can make about Rs 10 K per month.

So if you look at the opportunity - a 6 storey builind in bombay with 4 flats per floor has abou 24 flats or families. So 100 families is about 4 buildings. Now if you assume a conversion rate of 10% ( since the value is so easy to understand, it could be higher but lets keep that for starters) he will have to cover 40 buildings.  So even from a conservative analysis this makes sense.

The idea will be to franchise this across the India with a sophisticated backend in manage the supplier and customer relationships. Almost like Vichare couriers.

So across India we provide support to thousands of underprivilged youth to build a business..