easemytrip.com to empower traders as franchisees

New Delhi-based Easy Trip Planners' easemytrip.com is enabling traders, who frequently fly for business, to become its agents through franchise retail outlets. The business platform allows them to book their air tickets and earn commissions as well. Nishant Pitti, its director, said, "There are many traders in the pharmaceutical, garment and other small sectors who travel frequently for business. We want to enable this huge and largely untapped base to become their own agent and help people in and around their vicinity with air bookings and earn commissions." The prerequisite for becoming an agent of easemytrip.com is to be a registered trader with an office space of about 100 sq ft, a computer and internet connection. Easy Trip Planners was established in July 2008 with its portal venture and currently has 280 franchise outlets including 45 in Delhi. "We expect to reach a total of 500 outlets by the year end. Also, over 8,000 travel agents have partnered with us, some of whom have even become our distributors. At present, we are doing Rs 40-45 lakh transactions, especially domestic air ticketing, each day," Pitti informed. According to him, the business model will allow all franchisees to either book, re-schedule or cancel air tickets for which no service fee is charged. "Only the airline charge, as applicable, needs to be paid. This is our USP as no other OTA offers rescheduling of tickets online today," he explained. The company is targeting the FMCG industry, hotels and other sectors especially in secondary and tertiary cities. Pitti informed, "Since the transaction mode is not based on credit card, it is very convenient for them. They keep a lumpsum in their account with us which they can use. In some cases, we also give credit for 15 days, even for LCCs, on security deposits." According to the contract, a franchisee is locked for a period of three years with the company. On each transaction, agents get five to 10 per cent commission depending on the airline and travel fare. On the other hand, the franchisees are encouraged to establish their own business identity with a branding of their own for making bookings on easemytrip.com platform. The company had invested around Rs 1 crore through internal funding last year. It is now increasing its capacity with a call centre for agents. "The centre helps our new agents (franchisees) to identify with the platform, transact through it and issue air tickets on phone calls. We have our branch offices in Guwahati, Ahmedabad and Srinagar. In the next two to three months, we will have branch offices in Mumbai and Port Blair as well," Pitti said