Life is a yatra (journey) and within this there is need for many a journey. Every journey has by default a destination. As pearls of wisdom proclaim it is not the end but the means to achieve the end that matters. And yes! Yatra Online provides the consumer the means to achieve their journey’s end for either business or personal agendas comfortably.

How did the yatra for Yatra Online begin? Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) who were the investors in GetThere.com, a provider of internet-based corporate travel procurement, G2 SwitchWorks Corp., which provides services to travel agencies and OnVantage, a supplier of marketing technology, were looking to back entrepreneurs within the travel space in India. In the words of Vab Goel, a venture Partner at NVP, “We wanted those who had done it before.” Yatra was an obvious choice. The founders of Yatra are Dhruv Shringi and Manish Amin, who, prior to this venture, worked together to help build and manage one of Europe’s largest online travel business, Ebookers Plc, which was recently acquired by travel giant Cendant Corporation for $410 million.

Yatra Online (www.yatra.in) is the first online and centralized travel services company for the Indian market. Yatra’s investors include NVP–Promod Haque’s venture capital firm, Reliance Capital (a member of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group headed by Anil Ambani) and Television 18 Group (TV18)—a leading Indian news broadcaster (CNBC TV18, CNN IBN and Awaaz) and an Internet player (running moneycontrol.com, commoditiescontrol.com and ibnlive.com) founded by Raghav Bahl.

“The prime driver for setting up Yatra in India was due to the boom in the online business here. Compared to the U.K. getting business done within the travel sphere online in India is quite nascent and hence the opportunities for growth are aplenty,” says Amin. “However the challenge in India is business gets done here depending on who you know. The challenge for us is from the offline travel agent and how do we convert offline travel customers to online.”

According to Goel you can’t replicate the customer acquisition model in the U.S. within India. One can spend $30 million and still be at sea to see the results. Norwest decided to play on having an advantage through strategic partnerships. “The traditional media in India is very powerful. This is the reason of our partnering with TV 18 who with their site moneycontrol.com has a wide depth of consumers and understands the Internet business well.