Being a niche player can get sticky in these tough times, especially if one is operating in the travel sector, which has been one of the most affected areas in the current global economic crisis. In an interview with FE’s Surabhi Agarwal, Vipul Doshi, CEO, InterGlobe Technologies, a travel technology and BPO solutions company from the stable of InterGlobe Enterprise, which owns the IndiGo Airlines, speaks about how volumes have slashed by 20% in the last one year but the company is tapping the domestic market and still sees opportunities in the travel space. Excerpts:

Around 85% of your revenues come from travel. How are you coping with the slowdown in the sector?

Travel has definitely taken a huge hit. Airlines have cut capacity and are cutting operational expenses. The number of people travelling has also significantly gone down. How we are coping with it is by going back to our customers and asking how can we take more cost out by moving more work offshore. The volumes are down 15-20%. Customers are also asking for price reductions. They are saying that since we are hurting, reduce the price and the number of people deployed. So, we have also gone back and re-engineered some of our own processes to make them more efficient and passed those benefits to our customers.

Is there any recovery in the sector?

Some airlines are doing well? some low-cost carriers have a very good operating model. Their market is continuing to grow and they are asking for more work from us. There are some entrepreneurs who are getting into the business and looking for solutions to kick-start it. Customers are now working a lot on the loyalty side, looking more at customer retention like introducing frequent flier programmes. So, there are still opportunities in the travel industry today which have not been explored.

How do you look at opportunities in the domestic space?

We are finding great interest in four areas ? the domestic travel industry, the telecom space, financial services, which will see a lot of action as the RBI comes out with new de-regulations and opens the field for everybody and lastly, the government itself, which is beginning to spend a lot of money on IT and IT enabled projects. We have put in place a very unique domestic model, which is very different from the international model. The key component of this model is better quality and low cost.