“Kya Apne Kabhi Online Hotel Search Kiya Hai?” Whenever we hear this line, the only face that comes to our mind is that of The Trivago guy – Abhinav Kumar.
Like many things, Social media has gained notoriety to make only memories of anything and things under the light! And when the Trivago man came on our television screen, everyone took notice.
Not because something was different or well-executed about the campaign, but rather because of the strange conduct of innovation and not ‘adapting to television’. The way he talked was even better.
So today we will tell how Abhinav Kumar’s journey starts from a small village in Bihar and how he became the Trivago CEO India.
He is the Country Manager of India’s largest Travel Search Company – Trivago. Abhinav Kumar is a manager by profession and he has done a Master’s Graduation in Economics from the University of Teramo, Italy.
Abhinav Kumar always has a small philosophy in it that you should never end it whenever you get a chance. See, opportunities do not come to us again and again and you should not let them go when you have opportunities.
Abhinav Kumar
Early education started from Nani’s House
Abhinav Kumar comes from a small village named Badhaiya which is situated in the Lakhisarai district of Bihar, India. Abhinav’s early education started from his grandmother’s house, which happened from a village near his village Badhaiya.
As we would have been seen in old Hindi films that people used to raise bags and go to school and study on the slate and have fun. Used to come home.
He used to come from a low middle-class family. He was studied in Nani’s house, but after Abhinav’s Mamaji suggested he was sent to a boarding school in Ranchi because his parents were not liked to study in the village. Then he studied 10th from Rachi, Jharkhand.
Sister was the only well-educated member in the house
His mother and father were not so educated, his Sister was the only one in the house who was well educated. Whatever she was doing was the best for him and he followed it. When he passed 10th, his sister had gone to Pune, then Abhinav also went to Pune with her and completed 11th and 12th, and also completed a bachelor’s degree from there.
I got real exposure by going to Pune because earlier I started from the village and Ranchi was also in a boarding school which mostly stayed inside the school. But when He reached Pune, he felt like “We were living in the night bulb, now we are on halogen“. There was something new, something was strange, there was something to understand.
Got first exposure when joined an NGO
After completing 11th he joined an NGO. And this was one of the biggest turning points of his life. It was an NGO of Youth. There Abhinav Kumar worked with the NGO of Youth for homeless people in Pune, after that he also worked for the election commission and worked on many small issues.
There he got big exposure when Tsunami came in 2004 after that he worked on many Relief Programs. He got a lot of enlightening learning experience there. And in the process of doing all this, he was engaged in making his CV different from other people.
He did not want to just pass the exam just by studying because there are so many people who pass the exam just after reading some notes, at that time Abhinav thought he had to do something different.
And his experience and knowledge helped him a lot in creating a good and different CV. He got the benefit of this further when International universities used to recruit students in India by conducting seminars.
Normally there used to recruit intelligent children but when they saw my CV, they were very impressed and said that no such student has been found who has done so many things with studies.
Scholarship for a different experience
The international recruiting team selected Abhinav Kumar and gave him a scholarship to the University of Teramo in Italy. At that time also a lot of people questioned him who goes to Italy to do the study because most Indian people go to the countries where English is spoken.
Anyway, he used to belong to the village of Bihar, so his English was not that good, so he thought that let’s go to a place where English is not spoken much.
Then he went to Italy to study and he always used to do bother the faculty head of the University by going daily to the faculty’s office and used to ask that our admission is done but we will get placement or not. Then the faculty head always used to say that we have invited you to study and we will prepare you for the market. After that, you will have to find a job by yourself.
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Learned Italian during the study
Abhinav Kumar had learned broken Italian language while completing his studies. But in Italy, it is not so easy to find a job because if you do not know the language of the place, then there is a problem with getting a job.
There is a city of Venice in Italy named Padua, there is a restaurant named Gaandi. That restaurant belongs to a friend of Abhinav who used to live in Uttar Pradesh, and during his studies.
He used to eat with him almost daily and used to share some innovative plans with him to bring this business to the internet.
Never did any Digital Marketing course
So from that, Abhinav Kumar started learning online marketing how to do blogs work, what is SEO because he did not know all this before. And let me tell you that “Abhinav Kumar had never done this digital marketing from any institute or college”.
During that time I was doing an internship in a pharmaceutical company, worked in this way for about 2 years. Then he got in 2012 to join Trivago.
At that time the support team of Trivago was hired him as a Country Manager in India, till then he did a lot of experiments on how to make a name in the Indian market. Coming into the Indian market is not so easy because Already many companies have made their existence and it was not easy to make their place in the middle.
From 2016, Abhinav Kumar started direct advertising for Trivago India.
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When I started some direct advertisement for Trivago India after seeing those ads, people started making memes on him, which was very fun for Abhinav. A lot of pages made him made memes on him and his unique line from his ad “Kya Apne Kabhi Online Hotel Search Kiya Hai?” became very much popular.
But he did not feel bad about memes and trolling because he always felt that “if I see someone laughing by seeing my face, what could be better than that”. He also accepted these memes and trolls as a challenge. After that, as time went by, new ads continued to be created. In this way, he becomes the viral Trivago guy.
Here are some memes on him:-
When someone says “Science Le Lo Bohot Scope Hai”… Kya Apne Kabhi Chota Bheem search Kiya hai? Kya Apne Kabhi online hotel search Kiya hai in Aashiqui 2
Now he is working with Paytm India
Abhinav Kumar got famous in the wake of showing up in a progression of promotions for Trivago. He worked with the Trivago India company till February 2019.
In September 2019, he was hired by a Big Mobile Payments company Paytm. He is now working for Paytm as Vice president of Product Marketing.