About Us
Chariot World Tours Ltd (CWTL) is a closely held public limited company registered under the Company’s Act of 1956. Headquartered in Bangalore, Chariot was incorporated on the 17th of July 2007. The key promoter of CWTL is first generation entrepreneur, Atmanand Krishna Shanbhag along with K C Madhukiran and Koushik Varaghur, who no longer serve on the board of the company since March 2020. Nicholas Karthik, Sachin Shetty, Karthik Nayak, Deepa Shanbhag and Deepak Prabhu are the other board of directors.
CWTL is in the business of providing professional travel services to fulfil the demand of the rapidly growing overseas as well domestic leisure travel. CWTL offers frequent fixed departure group tours to various
destinations across the world including the USA, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, China, Scandinavia, Russia, Dubai, South America, Japan, Egypt, Israel etc along with top Indian holiday destinations.
INDUSTRY BACKGROUND
India is in a historically unique period. Today, India has a large population of affluent elderly Indians with time, disposable money, relatives and friends across the world and information like never. The combination of all these factors has created an interest among this population to visit places around the globe. The young Indian population is also an affluent and well-informed generation with energy and interest to travel around the world. The average Indian traveller is a very value-conscious traveller with specific and clear preferences. Servicing this growing global movement requires consistently dependable professional travel facilitators who can inherently understand the Indian needs.
The promoters of CWTL recognised this opportunity in 2007 and formed a company to realise this opportunity on the basic principles of providing professional and dependable service.
CORPORATE INFORMATION
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Atmanand Krishna Shanbhag - Chairman and Managing Director
Nicholas Karthick - Director
Sachin Shetty - Director
Karthik Nayak - Additional Director
Deepa Shanbhag - Additional Director
Deepak Prabhu - Additional Director
AUDITORS
M/s BVC & CoChartered Accountants
PRACTISING COMPANY SECRETARY
Mr. Manjunath Reddy
BANKERS
HDFC Bank, Canara Bank
REGISTERED OFFICE
# 3446/40,
1st ‘F’ Cross,
Next to Bunts Sangha,
Vijayanagar,
Bangalore – 560040
Email: info@chariotworldtours.com
Website: www.chariotworldtours.com
BUSINESS DETAILS
CWTL operates fixed departure tours to over 30 destinations apart from private group tours, FIT tours, international hotel bookings, tickets and world-wide car bookings. Tour operations to overseas destination contribute to over 85% of the revenues. CWTL operates Government group tours, private events, incentive tours for institutions like Banks, other financial institutions, Pharmaceutical companies and other such large corporate movements as well as student educations tours. CWTL has identified exclusive and dedicated ground service providers at each destination and contract them to provide a variety of services to its customers. CWTL has developed expertise and complete capability to handle large groups, facilitate overseas events, handle exclusive private groups as well as provide individual facilities like hotel bookings, transfers and other travel services across top destinations.
IATA
With a constant increase in the number of departures every year, CWTL became a member of the prestigious International Air Travel Association (IATA) in 2010 enabling direct contracting with Airlines and internal issuance of tickets for tours as well as for customers needing ticketing services. CWTL’s ticketing operations is based out of its Cunningham road facility in Bangalore and is headed by experienced professionals from the airline and ticketing industry. The ticketing business of CWTL has grown into a profit centre and has started catering to small corporate and sub-agents in Bangalore.
VISA SERVICES
Visa is an indispensable part of any overseas travel. Visa services is also a specialised service needing a full understanding of all legal regulations and a dedicated team of professionals to handle the processing of the visas. With a growing number of guests travelling to various destinations, CWTL is processing the paperwork in-house for visas to all destinations for its guests as well as the public. Chariot’s Cunningham Road facility was created to cater to this requirement. A team of well-trained visa professionals handle visa processing from this location.
LOCATIONS
CWTL has 2 offices in Bangalore and 63 exclusive franchise outlets and 7 non-exclusive franchise outlets across Karnataka. More locations are planned in the future.
CWTL employs some of the best professionals across a variety of functions ranging from sales to operations, support and finance. Majority of the employees are in the role of business acquisition and play a critical role in contributing to the revenue growth. With a good geographical presence across the state as well as a highly motivated and incentivised sales team, CWTL has penetrated deeply into the Karnataka market. CWTL is probably the first company to have deep representation in tier II cities of Karnataka which has helped in building a strong brand association in the state.
BRAND CHARIOT
CWTL invests a significant amount of money and energy to build and market the Chariot brand. Brand building at Chariot has been closely about sales activities and has mostly been a support system for acquiring new business. Beginning with a 2-year media silence, CWTL entered media advertising in 2010 and has maintained consistent presence. All brand promotion spends have been from internal accruals and have been shown as expenses fully in the respective fiscal years. CWTL’s brand promotion strategy has had the right mix of Above the Line (ATL) and Below the Line (BTL) presence. Chariot places regular ads in leading English news dailies as well vernacular regional Papers. Chariot’s ads are also continuously present in non-traditional print media such as community magazines, area specific journals, coffee table books and so on. CWTL also reaches out to people through participating in local events, community ceremonies and so on leading to an “always-on” silent presence among the people.
CWTL introduced its tag line “Great Holidays! Honest Prices” in 2010 in all its campaigns and applied for a trademark registration for the line. This unique positioning has been well received by the public and has placed the company clearly in a space that had not been occupied by anyone. Chariot’s brand has always spoken directly to the consumer and this has given a leading edge in creating a particularly strong identity and association of trust.
With growing popularity and stature of the brand, Chariot changed its logo to a more appropriate logo that represents the company. The design change was handled by its long-time advertising agency Thousand
Suns and was backed by specific survey and research. In 2017, the new identity was revealed in the market. People have responded very well to the new logo.
To increase operational efficiency, Chariot has invested in its own ERP called CBOSS. The second version of this web-based software has tailor made functionalities that optimised the business process and putting all resources to better use.
MICE
Chariot has the expertise and experience of catering to large group movements for events overseas and in destinations within the country. Chariot is retained by multi-national brands such as Carl Ziess, Biocon India, DLF, Varsha Group, United Breweries and so on. Chariot MICE division has handled groups of numerous sizes ranging from 50 passengers to 800 passengers and to destinations across the globe.
PROMOTERS PROFILE
Atmanand Shanbhag – Chairman and Managing Director
Atmanand is the driving force behind the overall growth of CWTL. With remarkable finance acumen, Atmanand is an excellent administrator on one hand and an able strategist on the other. Atmanand comes with
over 20 years of consolidated experience in the Life Insurance industry in India out of which he spent 16 years in LIC. He held a range of positions in diverse functions at different geographical locations across India while at LIC. An associate member of the Insurance Institute of India, Atmanand was one of the first employees to join ING Life Insurance in India and made significant contributions in setting up the distribution channel in his 5-year tenure at ING. At CWTL, Atmanand plays multiple roles from handling finance, to operations and sales. He has completed IATA training and certification. Atmanand holds a commerce degree from Karnatak University. He is married and resides with his wife and two sons in Bangalore.
Nicholas Karthik – Director
Karthik joined Chariot’s ticketing team when Chariot obtained IATA membership. Karthik has the remarkable knowledge and ability to navigate the complex function of ticketing that includes BSP billings, issuance tracking, airlines interactions, advances and refunds and more. Karthik quickly took on additional responsibility as the business grew exponentially. The present ticketing team also has been completely set up by him. Karthik holds an IATA agent certification and comes with valuable experience in core ticketing functions from reputed travel companies in India and Kuwait. Karthik was inducted into Chariot board as director in September 2013. Karthik is married and resides with his wife and daughter in Bangalore
Sachin R Shetty – Director
Sachin Rajeev Shetty is a Commerce Graduate from Bangalore University. He joined the Chariot finance team in 2014 and involved himself in taxation, accounting & statutory requirements of the company. He takes care of the legal aspects of the company. Before joining Chariot, he was specializing in statutory audit, internal audit, tax audit & labour laws with audit firms and worked with different companies in the field of finance, administration & operations.
ADDITIONAL DIRECTORS
Karthik P Nayak
Karthik P Nayak holds a Master degree in International Business from Roehampton University London, UK. He comes with over 8 years of experience in the field of Construction, and Automobile Industry.
DEEPA SHANBHAG
Deepa Shanbhag joined the board of Chariot as a non-executive additional director since March 2017. Deepa Shanbhag is an educationist with a passion to assist, orient and shape children at early years of their education. She runs a voluntary after-school teaching program assisting children to cope with their curriculum. Mrs Shanbhag is a commerce graduate, and she has completed IATA training and certification. She is married and lives with her family of 2 sons in Bangalore.
Deepak Prabhu
Deepak Prabhu holds a B.Arch. degree from Karnataka University, Dharwad & is a practicing architect with about 24 years of experience in design & design co-ordination of residential, commercial, institutional buildings.
FINANCIAL
CWTL is a zero-debt company and has delivered consecutive profits in the previous 10 fiscal years. CWTL also declared over 20% dividend consistently for the past 10 fiscal years. The company’s books of accounts have been maintained stringently according to the applicable laws. The books of accounts are regularly audited by M/s BVC & Co.
EXPANSION & FUTURE
CWTL is a young, professional and ambitious company with a long-term focus in the travel industry. As a part of its strategy to rapidly expand, business franchising and technology growth are being pursued with great vigour. CWTL is also keenly looking at direct operations in key large volume destinations like Dubai, London and the USA.
CONTACT DETAILS
For any further information, please write to info@chariotworldtours.com.
