Picture perfect souvenirs

TOURISM

How do travel buffs preserve memories of a visit to a tourist destination? Mementos and miniature replicas, perhaps.

But 101 Moments, a 10-month-old Delhi-based company, thinks it is best revisited by pictures and descriptive texts backed by lilting music.

Last month, to time it with the 350 years of celebration of the Taj Mahal, the company launched a CD on the country's most loved monument.

In March 2004, when the company was set up by freelance graphics designer Anuradha Sarup and PR consultant Kanchana Prasad, it launched its first CD on The City Palace in Udaipur.

The CD had nuggets of information on the architecture, religion and history of the city's birth on Lake Pichola. Promoted as a post-visit product on the tourist site, the company has already sold 2,000 CDs and hopes to break even by the end of the first season.

Commenting on the business, Sarup says that though the souvenir market is highly developed abroad, there is no organised market in India. But 101 Moments may face competition from many travel related CDs available in the market.

Sarup says that her product is unique: "Each one of the 100 pictures is explained by a descriptive text. We don't want to duplicate what the websites have to offer," she says. The CDs run only on personal computers.

While Sarup's strategy is to market the product as a souvenir, inquiries have started coming in from travel companies that want to use it as a pre-visit information kit for tourists.

"Because of such queries we have also started including maps and other information on the city in the CD," says Sarup who has plans to bring out the CDs in the French, German and Spanish languages.

The company has recently signed up with CD distributors. The products are also available in five-star hotel shops like Khazana and at the Hyatt and are priced between Rs 450 (Udaipur) and Rs 550 (Agra).