KK Birla travel firm plans call centre

Lionel India Ltd, the corporate travel advisory firm of the K K Birla group, is planning to start BPO services for Global Experts in Travel (GET), a Michigan based global corporate travel advisory.

Lionel would set up a call centre in mid-2005 to serve its own clients as well as for the global clients of GET.

Sydney Express of Australia and Flytours of Brazil, two global corporate advisory have evinced interest to participate in the BPO as well as in the call centrtes of K K Birla group outfit.

Lionel India, formerly known as Rosenbluth Lionel India, has 10 per cent equity stake in GET along with former Rosenbluth worldwide partners.

Jyostna Poddar, chairperson of Lionel India, said GET's combined technological resources and travel consultative expertise will potentially reduce the annual global travel expenditure of the corporate houses by more than 30 per cent.

Lionel and other former partners of Rosenbluth formed GET in June 2004 following the takeover of Rosenbluth by Amex.

The K K Birla arm would run the corporate travel advisory business as GET India. GET is also planning to launch a multilingual travel portal in November 2004, which it claims would offer one stop solution for corporate travels.

The CEO of Lionel and the director (Asia) of Global Experts in Travel, Gaurav Sundaram, said Lionel is now working on the size and investment of the BPO and call centre.

It has not yet finalised the place for call centre but Sundaram indicated that Kolkata is in their consideration as a possible place for its BPO as well as call centres.

"We are likely to launch the call centre and BPO in third week of 2005. We are looking at various places like Kolkata and Bangalore. Our registered office is in Kolkata so the company might set up those here in Kolkata," he said.

The Lionel CEO claimed the group has enough fund to set up call centres and BPO, However, he has not ruled out induction of foreign partners for technical reasons.

"Like we could take the help of Flytours of Brazil in Portuguese and Spanish call centres," he said.

Lionel reported turnover of Rs 100 crore in 2003-04. The company is looking for 50 per cent jump in turnover next year.