With the travel industry coming to a standstill in 2020, a growing number of travel agents across India are constantly looking for an alternate revenue stream to survive. To assist and help the travel industry partners, Mumbai based travel expert – Arvind Tandon has launched ‘Bima Karlo’. The brand will provide free registration, online training, product training, sales assistance in different vertical of insurance like life, vehicle, overseas, health, motor, fire, etc to travel agents across India.

Talking about the new venture, Arvind Tandon, Founder, Bima Karlo said, “It has been a sorry state of affairs for the travel and hospitality sector with zero incomes, millions of layoffs, cruises, airlines shutting down, tourism reps not being paid and even big players stopping salaries. Therefore as market leaders and as the founder of Ark Travels Pvt. Ltd, 39 years back and who has been offering a viable, alternate income option to retail agents across India, I joined hands with Anil Garg, founder of Explore Travel TV channel, ex-CTO Sony TV and the founder of the Internet in India, and commenced setting up another viable income model for travel retailers.”

According to Tandon, travel agents are familiar with commission model in business (on all products) and online training which are usually provided by service providers like airlines, hotels, cruises and tourism boards. After imbibing this information, the agent hones his skills on Google and offline and sells at a marginal commission of 8-10% to customers. “Thus, we had to look for a model similar to this as well as where bookings could be done on a CRS like system. And to top it all, we found an Insurance broker named Robinhood, who was glad to be our principal. The company has over 500 employees and is listed third in the hierarchy of insurance brokers in India. It also has contracts with 25 Insurance companies and has in their arsenal a CRS like system as well as a mobile app for ease of selling by agents,” added Tandon.

Talking about the joining fee, Tandon said, “There is no joining fee whatsoever. The whole point of starting this business was to help agents who are keen to explore new business revenue streams. Even the online training will be free of cost. In fact, there is so much to do in the insurance industry that agents can continue this business and earn quite well even after the travel industry is back to normal.”

Currently, there are close to 40 travel agents registered for this and the company is expecting to have over 500 agents to join by the end of 2020.