Journey Of A Lifetime

From handwritten postcards to enabling high-tech travel experiences, Kesari Tours has walked the walk. Shailesh Patil tells us their story of faith and fortitude.

- Tsunami Costabir

Back in 1984 when Kesari first started, they did their advertising through handwritten postcards sent for 10 paise each, Shailesh Patil, Managing Director at Kesari, tells us. Shailesh and sister Veena prodded their father to start his own travel agency when they realised that he wasn't getting his due at the previous agency where he worked. A bold move for two teenagers of 17 and 18 and their father. Here's how that story panned out.

All Aboard

"We named the company after my father Kesari Patil. Since we came from the village to Mumbai, we didn't have any other identity other than his." The advertisements on their postcards would read something like: "We are arranging a tour to Kashmir from the 5th-11th of April. If interested, come visit us." Their little family would stay up all night writing about 100 cards each and send them off the next day.

Then, in 1985, Shailesh recollects visiting Singapore for the first time where he saw a computer. Rajiv Gandhi, the then Prime Minister, had a scheme giving loans on computers. Under that scheme, they paid the initial deposit of ₹15,000 for a computer and printer costing ₹79,000. "People thought we were crazy. The cost of the computer was higher than that of our office which was ₹60,000." The computer, while an enthusiastic investment, didn't initially reap any benefits. People didn't really know what to do with it. Through research, trial and error, Shailesh figured out some of its uses like typing and printing and soon got into programming. He built a program with a database of all Kesari's customers and their birthdays. This marked their move into personalising experiences for customers in a big way.

Automating Before It Became The Norm