Newstrack

FlightRaja involves agents in unprecedented e-commerce venture

Bhisham Mansukhani - Mumbai

FlightRaja will involve travel agents in its unprecedented mobile commerce venture which it recently launched, that enables cell phone users to check availability and pricing for flights and even book them.

Ashwini Kakkar, its chairman, who picked up a sizeable stake in the company said that while mobile commerce would put travel retail in an entirely new perspective, the brick-and-mortar travel agent would be involved. Bangalore-based travel solutions' company Flightraja also has an online search engine and kiosks at terminals and malls as part of its strategy for distributing inventory.

Interestingly, FlightRaja will enable agents to have easy and wide distribution by encouraging the yet untapped retired and homemaker community to take the opportunity to earn from the domestic aviation revolution. FlightRaja CEO, Vinay Gupta, says that railway seats could also be part of this strategy. The company currently has 110 online ticketing agents as part of its plan in Bangalore with another 70 in Chennai. "The idea is to have multiplicity of options, both to book for the passenger and earn for the intermediaries. Technology has never sought to disintermediate the business but merely make inventory more accessible to those who use the Internet," Gupta said.

FlightRaja already has a user base of 1,00,000 customers logging in 200 daily bookings. The process of booking a domestic flight through SMS entails sending message to 4242 with destination and date details and the sender then receives the best fares and availability for the route following which they can choose to send their credit card number and confirmation. They will then receive a PNR which they can show at the airport to receive their boarding passes.

India already has 117 million mobile users - a community which is expected to touch 350 million by 2010. While domestic airlines are the initial focus, FlightRaja will add international airlines, railways, car rentals and hotel rooms soon.