Manish Chandra, the chief executive officer of Net2travel.com which wentlive on Wednesday, chucked his four-year-old high-profile job as a directoron the borad of HSBC in Delhi four months ago to fulfill his Net dream. AtHSBC, he was in-charge of the entire portfolio management and funded ahandful of start-ups in that capacity. He was also the chief financialofficer at Nokia before that.

Considering that there already are half-a-dozen Indian travel sites inoperation, Net2travel is not an early mover and Chandra knows that. Havingidentified what he wanted to do in the Net space, he went and acquired PearlInternational Tours & Travels and Hopp Worldwide Ltd to have a `click andmortar' model since he did not have an existing expertise in the traveldomain. The deal entailed a stock swap deal in which the two travelcompanies are currently being evaluated by Arthur Anderson. Besidesproviding an existing business line, it gave Net2travel an instant turnoverof Rs 150 crore.

The company, which started with unspecified angel investment, is now intalks with venture capitalists to raise $10 million in the first roundwithin two months. Arthur Anderson has been asked to simultaneouslyevaluating the cumulative business of the two travel companies. Based on theevaluations, Pearl and Hopp will be allocated shares in Net2travel.com, saidChandra. Interestingly, all Pearl and Hopp employees will also be givenemployee stock options in Net2travel.com.

The portal claims to be the most extensive site targeting independenttravellers known in tourism jargon as family inclusive tour (FIT) category,while enabling online transactions. It is targeting the domestic inbound andoutbound travellers.

Net2travel has already tied up with a number of tour operators, ticketingagents, hotels, car rental companies and cruise companies for providingcomplete packages. It will also provide online travel finance and insurancethrough tie-ups with financial institutions.

``We have put together an intutive serach engine on which after you feed theparameters, chalks out the packages for you from within our tie-ups. What wehave in addition is a comparison matrix and a very powerful and exhaustivedestination guide which totally supports e-commerce activities,'' saidChandra.

For revenue, Net2travel will bank on building volumes of business, besidescommissions from the airlines, hotels and car rental companies.