TravTalk India Online Magazine
Zubin Karkaria, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, VFS Global, shares how it all started for them and what makes travel trade relationships important for them. He also throws light on how environmentally conscious and technologically driven VFS is, at all levels and even offered to help the industry with the same.
Nisha Verma
No international trip today is possible without a visit to VFS Global, unless, of course, a country offers visa on arrival, but gone are the days when people used to take appointments with different embassies and wait for them to give visas.
Identifying this need, says Zubin Karkaria, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, VFS Global, led him to conceptualise the company. “When you identify a need, it is important that it serves not only yourself, but also the people. Hence, when, as a tour operator, we found it difficult to get visa appointments for our clients, we saw an opportunity not only for us to reduce the load on the embassies, but also to make the process more efficient. That is how we decided to start VFS Global in 2001, and our first customer at that time was the United States of America Embassy in Mumbai,” he informed.
With 69 countries and growing, VFS Global is adapting to the changing world. Commenting on how technology is changing their business, he said, “When it comes to AI, it is important for all of us to believe that it is coming. It’s important to open our minds and be adaptive about it, because it’s critical for our businesses. We started 18 months ago on AI. Today, we have 16 data scientists across the world working on AI products with the governments. In the next two months, we will launch, six AI products for the British High Commission worldwide. We are also working on AI products that not only improve efficiencies, but also help the applicants to ease the process.”
Stressing that partnerships within the industry are vital, he highlighted, “The travel trade fraternity is a partner to us. Hence, if there is any help that the trade would require from data scientists within VFS for their business, we will be happy to collaborate.”
Speaking on sustainable and responsible tourism, he said, “The planet is the only place that we have and we have to protect it. ESG in our context is very serious. Out of 15,000 employees that we have in 150 countries, everyone, including me, has an ESG target in our bonus.”
“Hence, 7.5 per cent of our bonus is calculated on achieving the ESG target in our organisation. That is how seriously we take that. I think it’s just not a particular exercise that you need to do, but we should really see what we can do in terms of inclusion, diversity, and protecting the environment,” he added.
