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Shubhra Tandon

Mumbai, April 9 Cleartrip.com, one of the leading Indian online travel agency, would soon be offering international products such as airline tickets and hotels on its Web site. The products would be offered through its portal in about five weeks’ time.

The portal claims to adopt a unique approach towards its new offering. Some of the important components would be the ability to book low-cost carriers for further connectivity in the foreign land, and an inventory of a large number of international carriers, 135 international destinations and about 70,000 hotels to choose from. The prime focus would be on offbeat and lesser known international destinations.

Cleartrip is also working closely with the tourism boards of various destinations currently present in India. Elaborating, Mr Stuart Crighton, Chief Operating Officer of Cleartrip.com, told Business Line, “You can’t do this (international products) alone as tourism boards play a significant role in representing their particular markets. Till now they were using traditional media like print or TV commercials for spreading awareness about their markets.

“But now, while we provide them a very interesting environment to merchandise and market their destination to the target customer, they in return bring in a lot of their specific domain expertise in nuances like where to eat, what’s different, what to buy and other such generic stuff. This partnership works better in the long run for the customers.”

Though the company was in the news for launching its international products six to seven months ago, Mr Crighton said that they did not want to launch an average product. The travel portal is also in the process of aggressively expanding its offline kiosks in association with Mr Kishore Biyani’s Future group.

Regarding investments in the new venture, the company would be utilising 30 per cent of its third round of funding, said Mr Crighton. In February 2008, Cleartrip raised around Rs 80 crore from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Mahindra Group and its previous investors — Sherpalo Ventures and Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, DAG Ventures and Gund Investments LCC. This round was led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

Cleartrip is also looking at potential acquisition along its product segments. “We are open to potential strategic acquisitions along the product line, maybe in the offline space to further our offline programme, and in product spaces like car, hotel, rail, or packaged trips. It will all depend on how we decide to grow our content, build on that, and customise it to our advantage.”

Currently, this Mumbai-based travel portal is doing 7,500 domestic air transactions a day and over 190-200 room nights a day.

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