TV18, Reliance Capital come together to launch travel portal, Yatra Online

Two non-resident Indians (NRIs), Dhruv Shringi and Manish Amin, have come together to launch Yatra Online (www.yatra.in), an online and centralised travel services company. The project will be jointly financed by Reliance Capital, Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) and TV18.

Yatra Online will help consumers book airline, railway and bus tickets and reserve hotel rooms on its website, by calling its 24-hour, multilingual customer service centre, or by sending an SMS. All these services will be provided free of cost to the end user. In its first phase, the company plans to cover around 5,000 cities in India.

“With our nationwide reach to consumers across India, we will bring more bookings to hotels and airlines. Even the smallest hotel in the smallest town in India will benefit from more visibility than they have ever experienced before,” says Shringi.

Apart from providing travel-related news and travel advisory services, Yatra Online will also rate the hotels and motels on the basis of their services. This will be upgraded on a regular basis from the feedback of people using the services.

Vab Goel, venture partner, NVP, says, “The idea is to make travelling less cumbersome and expensive. So far, only the rich were able to avail of five-star luxury, but our company will help people from middle class backgrounds also to identify places where they can enjoy better services without spending too much money.”

The company, which will have its headquarters in Delhi, hopes to be functional by the first half of this year.

© 2006 agencyfaqs!