Being an authority as a travel partner key to trust for visa: Atlys’ Santosh Hegde

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Mumbai: Once an elusive mark of wealth, the annual foreign vacation is now getting increasingly common among affluent Indians in metros and smaller cities alike. So much so that a16z-backed visa services firm Atlys ran a unique sale in August last year, offering visas for just ₹1.

Yet, as more Indians travel to exotic destinations, they are realizing the complexity of securing a visa and the pain of failing to get one even after hotels and flights are booked. So, how does a company such as Atlys deal with a barrage of rich, disappointed customers Santosh Hegde, head of marketing at Atlys, talks about the clutter in travel marketing, the rise of artifical intelligence (AI), and how to handle irate customers with care. Edited excerpts: This problem has been bothering a lot of marketeers in the new era.

Now, in the travel sector, things work a little differently. About 30 million Indians travel every year and take between 1.2 to 1.4 trips a annually. This means around 70% Indians are traveling only once a year.

So, there will always be a set of consumers in the market looking for a solution like, say, getting a visa. But at a given point of time, only 8-10% of potential customers will be in the market. For us, the role of performance marketing is to bring that 8-10% of the total customer base into our platform as quickly as possible.

But the lowest possible cost of customer acquisition or CAC lies in organic marketing. Organic marketing tends to be expensive and so not a lot of people want to invest in it. Also, brand building is often confused with heavy-duty media.