Shreya Shimpi
The interactive session was conducted at the Hotel Ambassador in Mumbai on the 12th October 2023. It was attended by Founder & Chairman Emeritus, Mr Carl Dantas who shared his valuable suggestions during the event. Among the other attendees were National Board Members and Directors- Mr Jagat Mehta, Mr AbhijitKhadilkar, Mrs DiptiPradhanThakoor and Mr DharmeshAdvani.The event was hosted by Sublimis Technologies, an ERP Business Automation Platform. Mr KarthikVenkatraman, CEO & Co-founder, Co-founders Mr Avtar and Mr Kaushal and their team conducted a session with a live demo of the ERP platform. The Sublimis Co-Founder team of four, each having an experience of 25 plus years in the travel field have worked extensively to come up with this travel-focused ERP solution. The event was also graced by the presence of the VFS Team led by Mr Vishal Jairath, Head—South Asia, Visa Operations. It was for the first time that ETAA Members could interact and meet one-on-one with the VFS team. Mr. Vishal Jairath and his team answered the various queries of the members.
This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of ETAA and the journey of this organisation has been inspirational. BOTT spoke with Carl Dantas,Founder President & Chairman Emeritus, ETAA in an exclusive interview about achieving this milestone.
“I set this up twenty-seven years ago and registered it twenty-five years ago. We are going quite strong. We are close to a thousand members now. There are around 850-860 members now and there are many pending applications which we are scrutinising. This is our silver jubilee year. We just had our twenty-fifth annual General Body Meeting in September and we decided to space out our events but to bring in a lot more content. Sublimis is a new organisation. Karthik and his partners have got some new product which according to me, having served the travel industry for forty-five years, has a lot of merit in it. It has been a pleasant journey in the Travel Trade and I am happy to be a part of it.”
Jagat Mehta, President, Enterprising Travel Agents Association (ETAA) shared his valuable insights in a BOTT exclusive. “ETAA is in its twenty-fifth year and Pan India we have got five chapters. We have got about 750 to 800 active members. Our goal is that our members should grow. Secondly, we create a platform where members can do business among themselves, thanks to the technologies available now. We are growing and our goal is to impart knowledge to our members. Knowledge is the key. In today’s world, we cannot avoid technology. You have to learn about it. People want to grow and they also want to compete with the big ones and attract customers, so this is one of the ways to minimise your work. When a new thing comes, there is hesitation to accept it but this is a win-win situation for them as well as our members. Also, thanks to Carl for getting the VFS team here today as it is rare for our members to interact with them one-on-one. Members are happy since most of their queries were answered by them.”
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