Hot Seat

Citizen of travel world

Iqbal Mulla Chairman & Managing Director, Citizen World Travel & MD, Treasure Tours

The headline is hardly a misplaced title for an entrepreneur who donned blinkers to build a niche on his own. Iqbal Mulla trained his sights on the highest-end of Indian surface transport including a US president's motorcade and his journey is far from over, Bhisham Mansukhani finds

The business of surface transport is regarded by most as a teething interlude before taking off to the skies. Yet, it takes a strikingly insular, contrarian approach to stay away from it on the basis of a vision that if all and sundry were to look to the skies, the roads would be a very empty place to be. And as it turns out, they were, at least for one individual, Iqbal Mulla.

Mulla, chairman and managing director, Citizen World Travel and MD, Treasure Tours, has created a spontaneous top of mind for just about any inbound tour operator who wants to transport his groups around in consistent luxury and safety.

But it didn't start that way. Mulla was first keen to lay the foundation for a business acumen to at least foresee and identify opportunities. After obtaining an MA in economics and an MBA degree, Mulla joined ITDC in Mumbai in 1978 where he quickly developed a reputation as problem solver, so much so that to escape the drudgery of bureaucratic complacence, he insisted on being appointed the defacto trouble shooter - a deft move that enabled him to top all the potential pitfalls and bottlenecks thwarting road transport at that point in time. However, the lack of systems and utter unprofessionalism at that point, led him to move on to Sanghi Motors and International Travels, a car rental and international travel company. "I got a break with Sanghi where I joined as a management trainee and gathered all possible knowledge about ticketing, tourism sales and car rentals."

Strikingly, his contacts perceived him as an individual rather than just a company representative. At Sanghi he had his first task of handling major international events, with the maiden World Cup Hockey tournament. During his tenure there, he was also in charge of ground transportation for British Airways crew and at his own initiative, launched shopping tour and nightly tours of Mumbai. However, certain labour problems emerged, prompting him to move on to Ambassador Travels where he continued to learn the ropes. A gem of an idea had by then already gripped Mulla, to go it alone, and relinquishing employment seemed like a matter of time.

Mulla started a car rental and bus service, Citizen World Travel, in 1984 with a solitary Ambassador car and within three years he augmented his fleet to 100. However, subsequently he wound up his car rental business to exclusively concentrate on coach travel. Then in 1990, Mulla launched Treasure Tours with a fleet of four buses, which subsequently grew to 30 with another 15 being added by the end of the year.

He chose to restrict the number of seats per coach to 35 even though his competition was packing in far more seats. He recounts one of his landmark achievements, of taking a 53-passenger group to South Africa in 1993. Mulla was appalled at the aversion of bus operators to deploy air-conditioned buses. However, most tour operators loathed paying more for this facility. So, he used a simple yet unusual approach. He had them travel one way in the comfort of an air-conditioned ambience without paying a premium and on the way back, the AC was promptly switched off. The difference in experience was so telling that they were willing to pay the difference. He felt it was a great way to illustrate the value and justify the premium. The conversions were numbingly smooth.

"I have decidedly focussed on inbound traffic. While most bus operators are tapping the domestic market, I felt important to create a niche - inbound tourists, multinational delegations, cruises and airline crews. I consciously chose not to fit more than 35 seats per coach. That said, I am now looking at tapping domestic tourism at the affluent level," Mulla said. In hallmark style, Mulla sees this as another opportunity hitherto gone abegging.

Arranging the delegation visit to South Africa more than a decade ago seemed like child's play compared to his most famous assignment so far - Bill Clinton's visit to India in 2000. The event entailed a 45-coach motorcade including a specially designed coach to carry the dogs and a private van for the US president’s wardrobe. The Oberoi Group was so impressed with Mulla's logistics, that it roped him in to transport its charter guests in Goa.

And if he ever felt he can rest comfortably in a niche which is still relatively lonely, his airline clients have blown that myth away, wanting him to open offices in every new Indian destination that they fly into, in order to consolidate their ground transportation with Citizen Travels. His hotel booking counters at domestic and international terminals sell more than 200-room nights daily, making a case for a further ramp up. Having travelled some distance since his travails as trouble shooter at ITDC and Sanghi to invitations to dinner with the US president, Mulla's penchant to chase down challenges is bound to keep him on his toes and above the typical - truly a travel world citizen.