Travel boom may tempt Cendant to invest

New York based Cendant Corp might be increasing its stake in InterGlobe Technologies Solution (IGTS) from 25 per cent to 51 per cent within the next six months, said Raja Natesan, president and chief executive officer, InterGlobe Technology Quotient (ITQ), a recently launched strategic business unit of IGE group of companies.

IGTS is a joint venture between Gurgaon based InterGlobal Enterprises (IGE) and Cendant. IGTS is IGE's arm for providing information technology and business process outsourcing (BPO) services. IGTS turnover was about $6 million, growing at around 40 per cent.

Cendant Corporation is major global player in hospitality, vehicles and travel distribution services along with financial and real estate services with market capital of around $ 28 billion, Natesan said.

Cendant has been the global partner of IGE in providing technology solutions to the Indian travel industry.

IGE launched its new arm, ITQ to offer end-to-end technology consulting by evaluating the current technological capability of their clients.

ITQ will work with Galileo India, a part of Galileo International belonging to the Cendant group.

Galileo India has experienced a growth of nearly 20 per cent and has market share of 50 per cent.

ITQ will be bringing together the IT and BPO expertise through the technology arm IGE, exclusive content via Cendant Corporation and travel distribution through Galileo India, informed Natesan.

"ITQ will primarily focus on catering its consulting and technical advisory services to the travel agents segment as it is expected to generate around 80 per cent of the business and the rest 20 per cent will be coming from airlines, hotel industry," added Natesan.

The overall Indian travel industry size is around $1 billion and is growing at an rate of 15 per cent.

Based in Gurgaon, the ITQ network covers 119 cities reaching out through 4000 agency locations, said Natesan.