How Tech Startups Compete with Industry Giants

When I joined Atadi.vn in 2016, the company was still a young startup in the online travel industry, specializing in low-cost flight bookings in Vietnam. I had helped Phong, the founder, build the platform since 2014. Despite its potential, we were a small startup facing a market dominated by agencies willing to book tickets on behalf of customers. Throughout my time leading and scaling Atadi.vn, I learned invaluable lessons about survival and competition in a niche market by focusing on the company’s core value proposition.

Defining a Unique Value Proposition

One of our first strategic decisions was to establish a clear differentiation and a long term competitive edge. With Atadi.vn, we focused on:

making low-cost flight bookings as easy as possible

that something airlines themselves struggled with at the time.

While traditional ticketing agencies booked flights manually for customers and airlines provided websites with multiple cumbersome steps that required credit card payments, Atadi.vn simplified the booking experience. We minimized the steps needed, optimized price comparisons, and helped customers secure the cheapest tickets based on factors like booking time, flight routes, and ongoing promotions.

We even enabled customers to hunt for "zero-dollar" tickets, which were only available on airline websites for individual travelers, not agencies. Our system also allowed for normal bank transfer payments and issued tickets automatically in near real time.

Additionally, we built a 24/7 customer support system to resolve issues immediately. This not only earned customers’ trust but also helped us build a loyal community. Young travelers and budget-conscious customers appreciated the ease of use and often spread the word to others.

Optimizing Technology and Operations

To compete with industry giants, technology was our core advantage.

Atadi.vn had to build a robust online platform capable of handling thousands of transactions daily without disruptions, all while maintaining an exceptional user experience, with low cost. This required my significant investment in analyzing the software bottle-neck and define caching strategy for available tickets, every step from booking and payments to ticket issuance and customer support. We also had to optimize our infrastructure to reduce costs and improve efficiency.

We implemented automation to reduce manual processes, saving both time and operational costs. For example, our automated system instantly confirmed ticket bookings and sent details to customers upon successful transactions (regarding to limited/no api access at the time), eliminating thousands of hours of manual work for our booking team.

One of our most significant innovations was aggregating ticket prices from all three major airlines into a single interface for comparison, something that no competitor was doing at the time, with a visual pricing line to compare prices for whole week or month (and note that we focused on mobile design at the early days). They used them alot. We also removed unnecessary input fields or auto-filled information for users, making it very easy to find the cheapest fares of the day, week, month, or even year through a highly intuitive interface and minimum inputs.

With limited financial and human resources, we had to be smart about infrastructure. We built our own call center and ticketing system using open-source solutions. I installed Asterisk, FreeB, osTicket and did some customization for our requirements. We knew our competitive advantage lay in UX, ticket aggregation, and keep low costs.

Key Lesson: Never Stop Innovating

One of the biggest lessons I took away from Atadi.vn was the importance of continuous innovation. For startups, flexibility and the ability to adapt are survival skills. Recognizing strengths and weaknesses, refining the product, staying laser-focused on core customer value, and constantly improving customer service are priorities that every founder or CTO must pursue.

Key Takeaways

Competing with industry giants is no easy feat for any startup. However, by creating unique value, optimizing technology and operations, and executing smart marketing strategies, Atadi.vn was able to sustain and grow in a highly competitive market. When a regional giant like Traveloka entered Vietnam, we quickly expanded into hotel bookings and successfully exited through an acquisition by VnTrip.

For any startup, persistence and the ability to innovate are the keys to overcoming challenges and achieving long term success.