Born and raised into a credible first generation business family with the promoter group each having distinction of impeccable qualifications from top institutes in India and USA. From Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering from IIT Madras, Roorkee, Purdue University to Chartered Accountancy(my father) with Masters in Business Administration from Sri Ram School of Commerce.
Our family business was born in the year 1979 in New Delhi. With interests in PET polymers (the pioneers in India under the brand name Pearl Pet , Pearl Polymers Ltd), apparel export (amongst the largest in India, with manufacturing facilities spanning across India, Bangladesh, China, Srilanka, and Vietnam with the largest retail brands as its customers- under Pearl Global Industries Ltd and House of Pearl Fashions Ltd), a fashion academy that is rated amongst the best - Pearl Academy of Fashion, to the business vertical I currently work full time in - travel aggregation and corporate travel under Pearl International Tours & Travels Ltd and Pearl Spaces (our newest venture were we are partners of RE/MAX USA building residential plots into independent floors in Gurgaon).
Our family is blessed with many hands and heads and therefore each family unit works independently towards their business.
I did my schooling in New Delhi at the St. Columbus School, post which I went to the US at Bryant University (Rhode Island) to study finance and marketing, and then returned to India to join the family business as a 'trainee' in Jan 2001.
The first couple of years I was trying to learn the ropes of the travel and forex business and much to my surprise first worked as a 'delivery boy' delivering Tickets & Forex and then graduated to a desk job as an 'assistant cashier'. Moving on from there step by step went on to become an Executive Director after 4 years. Our travel company invested into the then virgin territory of online travel in 1998-99 under the banner of Net2Travels which although a first for India, was way ahead of its time and hence was sold to a third party investor group during the dot.com bubble burst.
I also worked for 4 years in international and domestic sales selling PET Resin we manufacture to customers for their 'processing' requirements. Apart from this I also played a key role in raw material purchases, finance, cash flow and overall functioning of the plant.
In the year 2011 I moved back to travel very well knowing that we as a business group had missed the bus in capitalising the opportunity in online travel. Today we are ranked amongst the top IATA accredited aggregators of travel air ticketing in India and have a distribution base of other travel agents that source their inventory through our 'B2B Online platform' - Sastiticket.com This online platform today serves thousands of agents on India's only 'cash and carry' model. Apart from tickets we are also selling hotels, insurance and will soon be adding DTH recharge, Utility Payments and Mobile Recharge. The platform is also being re-engineered to service corporates for their travel requirements and am hopeful if all falls into place, I would have created a solid brand in Sastiticket.com which amongst other things, will hit the spot of every Indian given that we are a price sensitive nation.