Zubin Karkaria, CEO, VFS Global, was the chief guest at the recently concluded annual convention of the Travel Agents Federation of India (TAFI), in Vietnam. He was felicitated at the event, for the pioneering work undertaken by VFS in the travel and tourism space. In a short conversation, Zubin was quizzed by Ajay Prakash, president, TAFI. Here are the excerpts:
Zubin: It’s a beautiful, beautiful city. It’s my first time here; second time in Hanoi, but the first time here. I must say I am very impressed with this beautiful city. I think it is a place that everybody needs to see and be given the opportunity to experience, all those people who will matter in the future, to have more business tools to promote this city.
Ajay: As an Indian brand, you created a service that did not exist and you took it globally to another level. How do you do it?
Zubin: I think it is important to identify a need. And when you identify a need, it’s important that the need has to be, trying to serve not only yourself, but also the people. So, when we, as a tour operator were finding it difficult to make Visa appointments for our travellers, we saw that there is an opportunity not only for us to reduce the load on Embassies, but also to make the system process more efficient and secure. So that’s how we decided to start VFS in 2001, and our first customer, then, was the United States Embassy Mumbai.
Ajay: So, from there, it is presently 69 countries and growing. That’s a remarkable journey. So now the world is changing, there artificial intelligence, there’s all kinds of new kind ideas and technologies coming in. How does that affect you and how does it affect the business?
Zubin: I think it is important for all and for all of us to be that it’s coming in. And what’s important for us is to open our minds and become aware about it, because that’s very, very difficult for our businesses. We started 18 months ago on AI. Today, we have 16 data scientists all over the world, working on AI products with the governments. We are going to launch in the next two months six AI products for the British High Commission worldwide. And we are working on AI products that also help not only help efficiencies, but also help the applicants to ease the process. For us, it’s very important that it’s not only VFS but partnerships. Everybody out here is a partner to us. So, if there’s any help that you would require from a group of people that are data scientists within VFS, any help that you would require in your business, feel free to write to us and we’ll be happy to collaborate with you.
Ajay: Tourism for tomorrow – protecting the planet. What does this mean to you?
Zubin: This is only the place that we have and we have to protect it. And I think that’s very true. I think ESG in our context is very serious. Just to tell you with how serious we are. Out of the 15,000 employees that we have in 150 countries of the world, every one of them, including me, has a ESG target in our bonus. So, 7.5% of our bonus is calculated on achieving the ESG target in our organization. So that’s how seriously we take that. And I think it’s just not a tick in the box exercise that we need to do, but I think we should really see what we can do in terms of inclusion, in terms of diversity, in terms of anything that you can do to protect the environment.
