In my last 15 years that I have been a part of the travel trade industry, I have observed him from afar – a man with perfect demeanour who always has a kind word to say to you. He has never stepped the line, never hopped jobs, never made false promises to undercut the competition and never shown animosity to even those who perhaps did wrong to him and his company. Rajeev Nangia, Chief Operating Officer, TRAC Representations, who has been the pioneer in the representation arena in India, shares his inputs on his journey in the industry in an exclusive with BOTT Spotlight.
Priyanka Saxena Ray
A thorough Delhi boy, elder of the two siblings, Rajeev’s love affair with travel started much early in life, thanks to his father’s job with Indian Airlines. However, with no intention whatsoever to join the travel fraternity, Rajeev, post his graduation from Delhi University and some off the cuff knowledge in computers, joined Hyatt Regency New Delhi at their front office. He gave that job 5 years of his life before he felt the need to look for another opportunity.
“TRAC was formed in 1992 and since I was keen on trying new avenues, I approached them (Mr. Kavi Ghei) for a job and was made a part of the company in initial stages only. Doing this job was like starting from scratch for me as I had no clue about the work they were about to start doing. Within six months, I started questioning my decision as things were not moving within the organisation. Every company has a gestation period and we were experiencing the same,” reminisces Rajeev. Well, soon enough TRAC started working with some DMCs for sales in addition to drafting packages and attractions and selling it to the agents. Their first break-through came when they got Thailand as a representation client in early 90s and TRAC immediately stopped selling packages of Thailand as a matter of principle. Working with ethics was an important rule within the organisations – an unsaid code that had to be followed by all.
“We pioneered the whole concept of representation in India. We had no competition at that time, which was good, but we also had no example that we could follow in order to avoid making some mistakes. We thus landed-up learning many things by default,” shares Rajeev, smiling, and the look of pride is clear on his face. Rajeev graciously credits Mr. Kavi Ghei as the guiding force behind TRAC and states that it was indeed his positive and motivational attitude that kept them all afloat and moving forward at all times. I guess when you have worked with a company for close to three decades and collaborated with over 20 governments of the world, you definitely deserve that look of contentment that can be spotted at Rajeev’s face many times during the interview. Having said that, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that Rajeev has no bone of arrogance in his conduct – as I mentioned earlier, humility can indeed be his middle name!
However, the dynamics of the market has changed manifold in the last three decades. From a “no-competition industry” to one being flooded with many, representation has attained an all new meaning and manual in the recent times. Does he find difficult to cope up with this change? “Competition for me is delivering more at less value. I strongly believe that undercutting doesn’t help anyone as we are all in this industry to make our bread and butter. When you undercut, the services being offered are surely affected,” he shares, elaborating, “A lot of representation companies are selling half-baked cakes to the clients. Promising but not delivering, which is impacting the image of our country. People need to understand that representation is a gamut of activities and not just road-shows and press conferences. You have to provide your client a 3600 environment for it to blossom completely in a foreign land. Representation is a very creative field and one needs to constantly innovate and work on new ways and means to reaching out to the people.”
As he talks about the representation industry and business, his passion for the same is easily perceptible. It is indeed astonishing how he is not perturbed with the competition growing by leaps and bounds around him, and appear all calm and quaint in his conduct. “Success is not about the number of clients you have but what you are delivering to your client. At TRAC, we deliver 1:10 – meaning, invest one and get value of 10. We believe in taking out extra from the market and give our clients the growth that is more than average value growth. There are not many companies that can promise and deliver this,” he concludes with a soft confident nod.
Sitting with him for a couple of hours and hear him passionately talk about the nitty-gritties of the representation industry was an awe-inspiring experience for me as rarely these days do you come across people who are so knowledgeable and informed about their field and surroundings. Truly, they don’t make men like him anymore.
