Musafir.com: Travel portal with Sachin Tendulkar as a minority stakeholder enters India

MUMBAI: Musafir.com, a UAE-based travel portal that has Sachin Tendulkar as a minority stakeholder and brand ambassador, will launch its India operations on Wednesday. The cricketer holds 7.5% stake in the travel portal founded in 2007 by Albert Dias, Sachin Gadoya and Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah Al Thani. Musafir.com has already been selling tickets on an India website for the last couple of months. The company enters India at a time domestic air travel has slowed down but international traffic is growing.

Industry expects international traffic to continue to grow with low-fare carriers such as IndiGo and SpiceJet planning to expand operations to neighbouring countries and Etihad Airways and Jet Airways planning to expand operations in the Gulf region following the Abu Dhabi-based carrier's decision to buy a 24% stake in the Indian airline. Other Gulf carriers such as Qatar Airways and Emirates, too, plan to increase capacity to the country.

But online travel agents, or OTAs, sell only about 15% of 50,000-60,000 international tickets sold daily, while mostly brick-and-mortar travel agents sell the rest. Of the close to 1,75,000 domestic tickets sold daily, about half is done online, primarily by Cleartrip, Makemytrip and Yatra, Noel Swain, vice-president at Cleartrip.com, said.

In the last few years, several travel agents such as Travelocity and Travelguru have either exited the country or stopped selling airline tickets and are concentrating on hotels and travel packages.

Tendulkar is the second celebrity in the last two years roped in by travel companies as a stakeholder. Last year, actor Salman Khan bought a minority stake in Yatra.com.