Listed on the Sydney Stock Exchange and headquartered in Brisbane, FCM Travel Solutions, the Indian subsidiary of Australia-based Flight Centre Travel Group entered leisure travel segment apart from corporate travel segment in 2014.
The company is doing good and eyeing a Rs 3,500 crore revenue for the financial year 2017-18. The revenue target for the previous financial year was around Rs 2,000 crore.
Rakshit Desai, Managing Director, FCM Travel said, “We have got strongly established businesses in most of the segments, so we are probably a top two corporate travel player in the country.”
Desai believes that India is an incredibly complex market. It’s an amalgamation of many regional markets. To build a national brand, and a national business in India is a great achievement for the travel company.
Apart from building a national brand the company also feels that building an end to end travel services company including inbound and outbound with corporate and retail is there key achievement. The company has also got RBI license for foreign exchange business earlier this month.
The Indian travel market is growing, especially international travels. The total number of outbound travellers from India last year were about 20 million. Though the number is very few given the Indian population but there is an immense opportunity. FCM handle around 1.5 million trips in one year and tracking on the basis of an end to end travel company.
Looking at the universe of a total number of passengers trips transiting through airports, FCM has one percent market share and they are aiming to get the double digit growth soon. Desai said, “The market is incredibly fragmented. So, I think 10 per cent market share gives you leadership.”
FCM acquired Travel Tours Group in October last year. The company is in the process of closing that. “It’s planning out pretty well. So the integration has been quite smooth. It’s settled quite nicely. One element of that transaction is yet to be concluded because it’s a legal process,” added Desai.
FCM has raised capital two years ago from their existing shareholders and hasn’t deployed all of it. But there are no plans to make any more investment in the market.
“Our main priorities are to completely manage that acquisition and to continue the growth momentum in order to increase the distribution presence.”
Right now, FCM has certain scale of operation in 13 cities and substantial operations in another seven cities with 1500 employees across the country. The company has recently launched a franchise program in Hyderabad and got an outlet. Work is in progress to sign another one in Surat.
Desai highlighted, FCM is growing on an average of 15 per cent. The company is making revenue of Rs 300 crores a month. For FCM, the inbound business, corporate travel business are giving a boost.
Not only the large corporate honchos but Small Medium Enterprises is one of the exciting markets for the company. FCM has launched a separate division called Corporate Travel a year back. The special segment has already garnered Rs 500 crores of business.
“It’s been so positive that we are looking to leverage that and accelerate our expansions there quite quickly and we are seeing quite a lot of attraction for that service in places such as Kolkata, Jamshedpur, Coimbatore, Ahmedabad and Baroda,” concluded Desai.
