TravTalk India Online Magazine
The latest entrant in the Indian B2B travel space, Europ Assistance comes with an impressive international lineage. CEO Ram Seethepalli shares his prespective with TRAVTALK.
Hazel Jain
With a legacy of 100 per cent Generali ownership, Europ Assistance takes its responsibility to ‘assist customers’ seriously. Ram Seethepalli, CEO, Europ Assistance India & Middle East, explains, “We invented the assistance industry in 1963 in France and remain a global leader. A lot of people do not know of us in India because we are a B2B2C company. But our clients include India’s leading banks, insurers, credit card issuers, automotive companies and the retail market. In travel, we have proudly protected over 1.7 crore travellers and assisted our customers in over 2.5 lakh cases, including travel inconvenience and international medical care. And no one else comes close to us on this scale. Our global networks, global reputation and capabilities – combined with our focus on really caring for end-customers – is our significant value-add to our partners.” Europ Assistance counts Expedia, Airbnb, American Express, Visa, and AIG among its global clients.
For the company, India is a long-term growth market, underpenetrated, with a lot of room for many parties to win. “We are not out to go head-to-head with competition and we do not need to. There is plenty of space for everyone. And mostly, we are going to help our clients and partners. We have got a lot of value that we can provide to them,” Seethepalli says. Regarding the agent commission structure, he says the company will follow market best practices.
With its great lineage, Europ Assistance is internationally good at certain things, and travel is one of them. Seethepalli adds, “Our legacy is not the reason why travel agents should work with us. Our value proposition and what we can do for them today, our ability to strengthen the travel agent’s relationship with their clients, the quality of service and our world class customer experience, and our ability to truly take care of customers in their moment of distress and need is why travel agents should choose us.”
Huge scope for partnership & growth
Europ Assistance’s in-house research indicates huge opportunities remaining in this niche with only a fraction of Indians having travelled. “India had three crore international departures in 2024 while China had 15.5 crore. With our young population, growing disposable incomes, and the travel bug that is in most Indians, you can see why we are so excited to have a long-term view and to participate and contribute to this industry,” he says.
Europ Assistance has not yet actively sold its services through travel partners. “However, we have been behind the scenes all this while, and now we are just adding a new channel — that of travel agents. In many parts of the world, we play the full value chain. In India, we are moving into the insurance broker space. We will start engaging travel agents in major cities like New Delhi, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Punjab, and expect to grow rapidly from there. We are still, however, in the pilot phase,” Seethepalli shares.
