Get Local | Social Entrepreneurship
A cinematic tour to explore the reality of Mumbai
Project Summary | This initiative was developed as an experiential tour of Mumbai, with a focus on the social, economic and local culture of the city.
The Team | Anwesha Sengupta, Shrijit Chakraborty
My Role | Design research, Business Design, Branding, Product Ideation, and Execution, Team Management, Hiring and Training
Duration | 8 Months
Tools Used | Illustrator, Photoshop, Wix, Google Suite
The Story Behind the Project
A place is not a mere geographical entity. It is a living existence. This tour, conducted by Get Local, helped tourists discover the reality of Mumbai with a unique cinematic experience. The aim was to design an informative and fun tour around the city that could be marketed to backpacker hostels. Building off my prior experience from #EmpathyForMumbai campaign, I wanted to curate an experience for newcomers to the city that would allow them to explore the lesser-known nooks and corners of the city.
Stage 1 | Customer Discovery
The customer discovery for this venture started out long before we established a targeted research plan. It evolved through a series of conversations with fellow backpackers and peers traveling to Mumbai for the first time. After speaking to about 15 such people, I started noticing a pattern in the conversations. Following this, I developed a research plan to understand the potential customers better in detail. From these interviews, the following personas emerged.
Among 4 types of personas, two were of backpackers and two belonged to the local business owners. Synthesizing the research from the interviews further, I broadly classified the users into two categories - the travelers and the business owners and mapped out the following.
Stage 2 | Outlining the Target Group
The iterative rounds of research and my prior experience with #EmpathyForMumbai campaign helped me to understand the potential users -
people who wanted to explore the city in a guided, but safe manner.
hostel owners who wanted to curate activities for recommendation
local business owners who wanted exposure.
Once the customers were outlined, it was time to understand how Get Local could establish relationships between these groups.
Stage 3 | Value Proposition
Before jumping into defining the Value Proposition of the business, I had a look at some of the existing tours in the city. 3 main types of themes emerged - Heritage, Bollywood and Slum Tours. None of these tours offered a cohesive image of the city and all of them glamorized some aspect without really considering the big picture. The following table is a brief competitor analysis.
Synthesizing all the research to the conclusion that there is a need for a curated experience where newcomers and backpackers can acclimate to the city and ‘get lcoal’. The experience is meant to enable the backpackers to explore a busy city like Mumbai with a certain level of comfort and safety. This curated experience can be recommended by the hostel management, thus enhancing the overall stay experience. Furthermore, the tour would expose the backpackers to small and local businesses that are often not talked about in media/tourism publications.
Stage 4 | Business Model
Once I had clarity on the value proposition, the next stage was to outline the business model, in order to further understand the nuances of executing the product and recognize the cost structures as well as the value capture.
Following were the partnerships we established with Hostels in Mumbai
Stage 5 | Building the Product
Ideation
To understand the journey and the customer touch-points, especially from the backpackers’ perspective, I worked on the following storyboard so that I could visualize the details needed to design the tour.
Coupled with the storyboard, the following mind map helped me further during the ideation stage.
Developing the Route
Crafting the Narrative
While developing the route, every location was selected based on 4 criteria: The History - Mumbai’s colonial journey; Geography - Mumbai’s framework in terms of infrastructure and connectivity; Economy - Different Socio-Economic sections of the city; Culture and Food - Showcasing various cultural pockets of Mumbai.
Mumbai has a unique infrastructure of Local Railways, that connect the city from North to South and I developed the route with that in mind, to ensure easy movement through the city.
In order to craft a narrative that could be both exciting and informative, the tour was given a ‘cinematic’ spin and developed the following storyboard.
Branding
These postcards were designed as souvenirs for the backpackers who signed up for the tour, leaving them with a tangible memory of the experience. The participants would often get the fellow backpackers to write on it and sign for them.
The poster design was meant to grab the attention of the backpackers checking in and pique their curiosity through its visual. For that purpose, bright colors along with a quirky picture from one of the prototype tours were selected. The information was segregated and presented in bite-size to make it easily legible
Stage 6 | Execution
We started prototyping the tour alongside its development so that we could maintain an iterative process. With every tour that I conducted, I was able to gain new insights, gauge new issues that needed to be ironed out, and also improve my own confidence as a tour director. Following are a few glimpses of the different tours.
Stage 7 | Reflections
What started out as conversations with peers had snowballed into a social initiative within the span of two months. For me, this project was a great learning of building something of my own from scratch and constantly iterating it to develop it into a better, smoother experience. The work with this project never concluded; it was always growing and getting better.
The relationships that came out of the partnerships and the people I got a chance to take on the tour were beautiful and profound. The direct contact with the customers during the tours helped me gain more and more insights that I could then apply to enhance the tour experience.