interview with INDIAN AVIATION, Vipul Doshi, Chief Executive Officer of IGT

InterGlobe Technologies (IGT), is one of the leading companies in travel technology industry. It works with several airlines – both full service as well as low cost carriers. It is headquartered in Gurgaon and has presence in USA, Europe and China.

It has numerous certifications including ISO 9001:2000, ISMS 27001:2005 and CMM Level 5. It was named amongst 50 Fastest Growing companies in Asia by Deloitte. It is also named in top 25 best places to work by Great Place to Work Institute and Top 15 Emerging companies to work for by NASSCOM.

IGT currently employees over 2,000 people and also have plans to add over 1,000 new employees at its new facilities in Mumbai and Philippines.

IGT is growing very well even during slowing economy due to continuous innovations.

In an exclusive interview with INDIAN AVIATION, Vipul Doshi, Chief Executive Officer of

IGT outlines his company’s progress in this time of difficulties for the travel industry.

INDIAN AVIATION (IA): IGT is one of the leading companies in travel technology industry. What are the areas of expertise does the company have to offer?

Vipul Doshi (VD): IGT has been in the Travel and Hospitality business for over 40 years. This background gives IGT its extensive Travel Domain experience, and from this experience IGT has grown travel domain expertise in areas including; airline business processes, GDS systems knowledge, hospitality systems, travel agency products and services. Throughout IGT’s 40 plus years we have recognized the value of people and this recognition has helped IGT build an extensive resource pool of professionals with industry-standard certifications like IATA.

IGT’s operations cover a vast spectrum of airline and travel business processes within:

Information Technology (IT)

(Including Mainframe – GDS/ CRS Technologies and Open SystemsTechnologies)

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)

(Including Call/ Contact Centre and Back Office Transaction Processing Services)

Consulting Services

(Technology consulting and Quality Process consulting services to clients across the Trave industry vertical- International airlines, Low cost carriers and Travel Industry suppliers.)

(IA): Who are IGT’s airline clients and what services are they sourcing from the company?

(VD): At IGT we cater to the who’s who of the Travel & Hospitality Industry. Currently we have three GDSs, three of the top five airlines, three of the top five online distributors as our clients.

Below are some of our select airlines clients:

            United Airlines

            KLM                

            Virgin Atlantic

            Air India

            IndiGo

            South African Airways

            Martinair

Our confidentiality agreement restricts us to give details of the services we are currently executing specific to that particular airline. Below is a small snapshot of some of the services we are currently executing for some of our airline clients.

            Built Cargo Management System for a Leading Low Cost Carrier based in India

            Development, Hosting and Maintenance of the Airline Distribution System             for leading Full Service Carrier based in India

            Implementation of Interlined Electronic Ticketing for a leading South Asian carrier

            Baggage Helpdesk for One of the Top Two Airlines in the World

            Flight Disruption Support Services for a Leading Europe based Global Airline

            Loyalty Management for a Leading US based Airline

            Contact Center Service of a Leading India Based Full Service Carrier

            Contact Center Services for a Major Low Cost Carrier

            Fares Helpdesk for a Leading US based Airline

            Queue Management for a Leading South Africa based Airline

IA: Can you tell us about IGT's current operations and its expansion plans in the coming future?

(VD): IGT is one of those rare companies that has experienced good strong steady growth year over year. We have a very aggressive, yet low risk growth plan to expand our global delivery footprints in next three years. The long term goal is to ensure wider coverage as well as establishing near-shore capabilities coupled with language servicing capabilities to our customers.

IGT is currently commencing operations in Manila, Philippines. In addition, within the next few months IGT plans to establish a near-shore centre in the US.  Within the next year, IGT has plans to set up another centre in Eastern Europe, to service the European languages and another near-shore contact centre in US.

IGT has under its strategic plan many associations with organizations who assist in strengthening our capabilities in certain identified areas. These partnerships will be leveraged to provide enhanced value to its clients when necessary.

The demand for our services continues to climb, we employ travel industry expertise all over the world, and this expertise equates to quality and our customers recognize our ability to meet the toughest demands. Most of our business has grown through customer referrals, we understand the travel business and how it operates, and many companies today are seeking companies that understand their business like they do, they seek a service provider that has deep domain experience and know the lingo and terminology of the travel industry. This experience is why we are able to transition travel clients in days as compared to our competitors who sometimes need months to transition a process. We have said it before, but we believe that IGT is the best kept secret in the travel industry.

IA:  What are the emerging trends in the IT/Travel industry?

(VD): The current economic conditions have led to some drastic changes in the way companies operate within the Indian travel sector, and how they utilize their IT spend. IT costs have recently come under a microscope by most companies. Whether you are operating an airline, hotel or travel agency, everyone is forced to monitor the constantly shifting trends in the travel industry. Travel bookings are down considerably and everyone wants be absolutely sure they are maximizing the ROI from their IT spend.

According to a recent report by SITA, airlines are playing safe when it comes to IT investment.  This is due to huge losses expected due to the huge drop in passenger numbers this year but at the same time we are seeing airlines turning there focus on mobile services. Airlines are keen to increase the speed of adoption and availability of mobile services. “Mobile Check-ins” and “Notifications about flight status and delays” are some popular uses of mobile services. 

Now if we shift our focus on travel agency sector, things are slightly different. Just one year ago, when travel industry was booming, we saw many brick and mortar travel companies investing heavily in IT and launching themselves into the world of online bookings. But now, many brick and mortar companies, once keen to have an online presence have taken a stand still or even disappeared. Many are re-organizing their business practices, and operational processes to stay afloat during these trouble times.

On the other hand, when it comes to Online Travel Agencies (OTA) within India, most companies, instead of investing on new and advanced features on their website, are focused on utilizing IT to enhance their customer online booking experience, they are really focusing on the basics. Their logic is quite simple. They want to provide their customers with a positive online booking experience via basic, user friendly booking features rather than the current highly-complicated/multiple-options booking features, which confuses their customers and leaves the OTA’s without a sale.

IA: The world economy has taken quite a beating in the recent times and the airline, travel and hospitality industry has been affected to a great extent. In the present scenario how can IGT help its customers and the industries that it serves?

(VD): By now everyone knows the Travel Industry is facing pretty tough times. First hit with high fuel prices and then a global economic slowdown that has impacted travel bookings. Everyone operating within the travel sector has their work cut out for this year. We’re already seeing airlines, travel agencies, hotels scrambling, searching for ways to sustain themselves. Sales are down, expenses are skyrocketing, as many daily operating costs are fixed and non-controllable travel companies are faced with a serious dilemma. Cut cost, lose money or close the shop.

In our response to this crisis, we have developed several services designed to tackle this global problem. These unique services are designed to incorporate speed and efficiency while driving out costs. We refer to these services as Xcel and Xact Services, meaning accelerated faster services and exact precision performance together they provide a cost reducing formula specifically designed for the travel industry. These services have reduced the operating costs for major airlines to the tune of millions of dollars. The interesting by product has been the improved customer service. Our services have proven that companies can reduce operating costs and at the same time remarkably enhance the end customer satisfaction.

One such service, XcelRI™ – revenue integrity service, is our answer to the revenue leakage issue faced by airlines. Revenue leakage is one major concern within the airline industry which costs the Airline Industry worldwide US$ 5 to US$ 10 billion each year. The current economic situation has reduced the staff of most airlines leaving them without the expertise or the manpower to investigate the many causes of revenue leakage. That’s where our XcelRI™ services come into play.

We developed XcelERP our ERP solution designed specifically for the travel industry’s agent segment. This solution was designed to provide a real-time view into large multi location travel agencies.

IntelliSearch: A unique tool developed for one of the leading Spanish travel management company and its main advantage is to offer the best fares available for to clients, up to 25 per cent cheaper and in some cases even more. IntelliSearch uses complex and worldwide unique algorithms to find the cheapest fares. IntelliSearch technology offers fare structures no other site in the world is capable of offering. It has the possibility of accessing all the fares in every class on the flight and combining them in a unique manner to offer a substantial savings on the total price of your tickets.

Our solutions have been designed after working closely with many travel agencies and understanding their needs and how their business works. We already had the knowledge and capability of understanding how the airline industry works, and how the GDS business works. This knowledge comes from working in the industry for over 40 years. We have maintained some of the world’s most complex travel systems (GDS) for more than a decade. Armed with the knowledge of how those systems work we are able to help the travel agents avoid debit memos and other income impacting issues.

IA: What are IGT’s current revenues and how many employees does it have? Also give us your projections for the next fiscal and if you are going to add more employees?

(VD): Unfortunately I cannot share our revenue details. With respect to our manpower, we currently employ over 2,000+ travel professionals and this figure will considerably grow with our new centres coming up.

IA: Tell us something abut IGT’s current infrastructure and what are the plans in the near future?

(VD): IGT has four state-of-the-art facilities, two are located in the fast growing technology hub of India within the National Capital Region – Gurgaon, one in the financial capital of India, Mumbai and one dedicated service delivery centre is located in the south of India, at Chennai.

These facilities, currently house the software development centre and the BPO service centre. The premises include a fully equipped cafeteria, training rooms, recreation centre, medical rooms and the company’s India data centre. The operations centre has best of the line infrastructure with constant power (100 per cent backup), bandwidth available through secure and redundant network connectivity. Site security is further ensured by both digital means and 24 x 7 x 365 physical security.

We are investing heavily on IT Infrastructure to give us an edge over the competition. We have recently implemented Microsoft Exchange Server and currently implementing SAP based ERP.

As mentioned earlier we are currently commencing Operations in Manila, Philippines. In addition, within the next few months IGT plans to establish a near-shore centre in the US.  Within the next year, IGT has plans to set up another centre in Eastern Europe, to service the European languages and another near shore contact centre in US.