Mumbai: The surge of outbound travelers from India has increased exponentially in the last five years. According to UNWTO, the number is set to touch 50 million travelers soon. While technology has improved the efficiency around bookings, be it airline tickets or hotels, one area has remained tedious even for frequent travelers – visa.

Vijay Ladhani and Jayesh Bhararia, Directors of Siddhivinayak Travels & Tours Pvt. Ltd., a prominent player in the outbound travel space, decided to find a technology solution and thus was born Visa Lounge in 2016 – a one-stop solution for quick, hassle-free and efficient visa application process.

Visa Lounge is a unique fully-automated, state-of-the-art technology platform that allows travellers to apply for a visa, be it online visa or stamped visa.

“All you need to do is fill the online form, scan and upload your documents and we’ll take care of the rest. Within 72 hours, voila, your visa will be in your email inbox. It’s really that simple!” says Clevio Monteiro, CEO, Visa Lounge.

In addition, Visa Lounge also takes care of Travel Insurance (in partnership with ICICI Lombard), ‘Ok To Board’ for ECR passport, and Meet & Assist Services (in partnership with Marhaba at Dubai airport).

“While Visa Lounge is an automated service, our customer service team is always on standby to assist,” assures Kunal Sampat, Country Head, Sales.

Mumbai and Hyderabad were the first cities where Visa Lounge was launched and UAE was the only country offering. The same year e-visa service for 15 more countries was added. Today, online visa support is available on Visa Lounge for 36 countries.

“It was a first-of-its-kind service in India and we started with e-visa,” remembers Monteiro who has been with Visa Lounge from the start. “Every country’s visa form is different but we have built a unique form – one form for all countries!”

In every travel agency, the visa staff work the longest hours as there is huge inefficiency inherent in visa processing. So Visa Lounge with one form for all visas came as a godsend. For repeat customers, country, dates of travel and type of visa only need to be filled anew; rest of the information is auto-populated. This is extremely useful for corporate travel and group movements when visa process becomes very cumbersome.

All major B2B agents and corporates can log into Visa Lounge for hassle-free visa application process.

Visa Lounge has offices in Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Kolkata, and representatives in New Delhi and Pune. “If all goes well, we will open our office in New Delhi soon,” informs Sampat.

The volume of visa requests submitted per month on Visa Lounge has grown more than ten fold in the last three years. “In the next two years, we want to see that number grow 2.5X,” says a confident Monteiro.

B2B has been the focus from the start and will continue to be so. But the B2C segment which is currently a very small share of revenue is something Visa Lounge wants to grow substantially. “B2C customers still prefer an agent for visa though they do airline and hotel bookings themselves online these days. This is because there is general apprehension that if any mistake is committed the visa fee will be lost,” feels Sampat. Visa Lounge is building awareness around their customer support team which is always on standby to offer timely help.

Constant innovation is the key to retaining the first-mover advantage. 15 new enhancements for the platform are in the pipeline which will further improve efficiencies.

Integration with WhatsApp for offering real-time updates and a mobile app that will allow agents to submit visa applications anytime and from anywhere are under development. Visa Lounge has also entered into an agreement with Blue Dart for pick up and drop of documents. ISO certification is on the cards for the entire process.

The company is looking at offering Meet & Assist Services across the world where Marhaba has a lounge.

In 2017, Visa Lounge opened up the platform for the travel trade community in Sri Lanka and in 2018 Philippines was added to the list of international markets. South Africa and Singapore should become operational soon. “Visa Lounge as a platform is country agnostic. As soon as we can find a reliable partner in any country, we can launch visa services for the local travel trade community there,” explains Monteiro. Visa Lounge is sure going places.

Share
Categories: News