June 20, 2016 TnH Global

Investment in entertainment gives good ROI: Nishant Pitti

Founders of EaseMyTrip have always kept an innovative expansion approach, which resulted into the company becoming promotion associates and travel partners of more than 17 Bollywood movies. This branding initiative took a boost when Nishant Pitti, CEO and Co-founder of EaseMyTrip.com, entered into film production business. He has co-produced another Bollywood movie ‘Madaari’, which will hit silver screens on 15th July, 2016. Irrfan Khan is playing the lead role in the upcoming movie. The film is based on a real life unfortunate incident that resulted in people getting injured and led to loss of many lives. The film is directed by Nishikant Kamat, who is director of many popular films like Mumbai Meri Jaan, Force, Drishyam and Rocky Handsome. For the production of this film, the director has gone for immense research for a large period of time and grabbed the details of the mishap. TnH interviewed Mr. Pitti to know more about his coproduced movie Madaari and his growing interest in movie production.

Q. You have associated yourself with the production of a movie again; this is unusual, surprising and unique for an established travel entrepreneur. Kindly throw some light on what lead you to invest in film production?
For a businessman, getting into any business is not surprising at all. I always say that I am not only a travel entrepreneur but a business person. Travel is the field from where I started my business journey but I don’t mind investing into other projects that are different from it. Entertainment is a good area for making investments as it doesn’t only give good return-on-investment (ROI) but also helps in getting brand recognition. The business of the film production is really appealing and the charm of Bollywood has left no one untouched from it. As a businessman, I love to do innovative things and my love for the movie production is a part of it. I enjoy doing new experiments to gain profitability for my company and increase its brand visibility. Film production is a glamorous field that lures almost every Indian. Films help the consumers in identifying a particular product or service more than any other advertising campaign. EaseMyTrip.com has already participated in several Bollywood events by being travel partners or promotion partners. Now, we are also coming into film production. The greatest reason behind this initiative was my innate desire to do something creative along with promotion of my company. At present, most of the companies are connecting with Bollywood to promote their product and services through product placements or participating in internal and external promotional campaigns of films. If all are doing it, then why I should remain an exception. This is how I also came into film production.

Q. Please share your vision as a movie producer? Can we expect you to be increasingly involved with Bollywood in the future?
I am very new in film production business and want to produce some movies with fresh content not just to entertain the audience but create a long-lasting effect for the same. In fact, I want to make films with a different genre where travel will play an important role in the story. And you can expect me to be more involved in movie production if I get to associate with good stories and talented filmmakers.

Q. Why Madaari? What criterion do you use for movie selection?
Why not Madaari? As a producer, I want to offer something fresh to the viewers instead of producing stereotype cinema. The storyline of Madaari is excellent and so are its star-cast and production team. I didn’t make any criteria for selecting a film yet, but I would love to do films in which serious issues have been raised along with providing entertainment to the audience.

Q. Tell me about Madaari in terms of story and star-casts. Also, who is directing the movie?
As I said before that Madaari has a brilliant storyline. The story of Madaari deals with the emotional side of a father-son relationship and a man-made disaster that takes away everything from a common man. It is based on a real-life mishap due to which lots of people got injured and many died. This unfortunate incident happened when the part of an underconstruction overhead metro rail bridge on Andheri-Kurla road collapsed. The leading stars in the film are Irrfan khan, Jimmy Shergil and Tushar Dalvi. The very talented Nishikant Kamat is the director of the film, who is also known for directing movies like Mumbai Meri Jaan and Drishyam.

Q. Besides movie production what other businesses or areas are your company focusing on currently?
Along with films, my company is primarily focusing on its own business. However, Ease- MyTrip.com also participated in BCL 2016 and sponsored Kolkata Babu Moshayes team. In travel segment, we have plans to expand our franchise network in Tier – 2 and Tier – 3 cities of India to be in easy reach of those customers not having credit/debit cards for online transactions. We are also willing to open EMT Hol- iday Hubs in all metro cities of India to increase revenues from Non-Air Products, including hotels, holiday packages and car rentals. Ease- MyTrip has opened its branches at locations like Bangkok, Dubai, Singapore, and Maldives to serve the customers of these locations with efficient and cost-effective services.

Q. How do you view the current status of the tourism industry in India, both inbound and outbound tourism?
Travel and tourism industry in India is growing. If you talk about year 2015, the industry saw a growth of 7.5%, greater than the 6.9% growth that was actually predicted. The industry also generated great opportunities for jobs and employment. From last few years, India is also emerging as a popular place for traveling as we are focusing on appealing the tourists through campaigns like Incredible India and Atithi Devo Bhava. India never lacked anything in terms of exploration as it is home to the best beaches, hill stations, religious places and heritage cities. However, visa reforms and infrastructure improvements have helped India in promoting inbound tourism. Along with inbound tourism, India has become one of the fastest-growing outbound travel markets in the world. The reason behind this growth is the increasing population of middle class, which is very much fascinated with the idea of holidaying. The fluctuation in Indian rupees has not at all affected the growing number of Indians travelling overseas and splurging on various things. Thailand, Singapore, Maldives, Dubai and Malaysia are some of the most popular tourist destination among Indian travelers.

Q. How has EaseMyTrip performed this summer in terms of sales and bookings? What kind of trends are you noticing this season?
Summer Season has started and there are many places that became preferred choice of the travelers while many being avoided from visiting under the scorching sun or high level of humidity. Summer comes with leaves in schools and kids persuade their parents to go on vacations. Most of them go for holidaying at hill stations and tour packages of destinations like Kashmir, Manali, Shimla and Darjeeling are in great demand. Summer tour packages are primarily assembled to offer the widest range of exotic, cool and scenic destinations across India. Visiting destinations as amazing as Ladakh, as calming as Himachal, as pristine as Andaman or as culturally rich as the North East becomes a trend. I always notice that people seek to visit cool hill stations, untouched beaches and rejuvenating Ayurveda resorts in summer season.