My goal is to make TBO world's largest B2B platform

In past 17 years, TBO, a leading B2B travel portal, has grown rapidly with presence in over 100 countries. Ankush Nijhawan, co-founder & Managing Director says a lot of hard work & grabbing the opportunities that came along have gone into the growth and that he aims to make TBO the largest B2B platform in the world.

- Varsha Singh

Q How has TBO's journey been so far? 

In 2005, I was running Travel Boutique which was a B2B, brick-and-mortar offline Delhi-centric business with about 180 partners. Our topline was INR 1.25 billion. In 2005, technology was coming into the travel ecosystem and online travel agencies were beginning to mushroom. That's where the idea struck me that I should also look at the online route for me to grow in the B2B business. At that time, I was advised by a very wise man who told me that I should pioneer the B2B business online. It was also in that year that I met my co-founder and both of us decided to launch TBO.

We started from Delhi and grew rapidly, from 130 employees in 2005 to over 300 employees by 2012. Our first international office opened in Dubai in 2012. And from a two-person, small office somewhere in Dubai, we have come a long way to over 80 employees just in Dubai. Now we employ over 2,800 people in 122 countries in the world. I am proud that normally you have multinational companies coming to India, here is a company that was born in Delhi and now has a footprint all over the world.

Sometimes, I wonder how did this playbook open up, you know, starting from India to Dubai and now the whole world. I think a lot of hard work was behind it and I think we grabbed the opportunities at the right time.