In a short span of time, there is a new brand that has emerged in the travel industry as a brand which believes in promoting religious tourism in India. The company named Sai Amartya Tourism Pvt. Ltd. has launched a website by the name of
MyHolyTour. The brand has been launched by a Woman entrepreneur, Rachna Gulati, (the Founder, and Director) to give shape to her passion to serve the pilgrims in their faith based cruise.
The startup is the blend of content/information of all the religious places in India and the facility to book the travel related services to that place. It has the information about 600 religious places and is the blend of all the religions like Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Islam. It is also the blend of online and offline booking platform where the pilgrims have the convenience to customise their package.
Rachna Gulati, Director Myholytour in conversation with Chahat Jain of BWBusinessworld says religion is her passion and she is an avid traveler. She further said Myholytour operates in 5 segments all over India and plans to expand overseas in the near future. Check out the above video to know more about the startup.MyHolyTour provides religious packages for PAN India and in every state. This is with the motive to promote the religious places and religious tourism in all the states. Through various tie-ups and innovative packages, the company intends to provide world-class experience to the clients, while optimizing the cost of travel.
Religious Tourism is the travel with the core motive of experiencing religious forms, or the products they induce, like art, culture, traditions and architecture. The packages include individual as well as group tours. The focus is on Indian locations (inbound travel) as India has numerous Religious, and Spiritual destinations and diverse culture.
The services comprise many facets of the Religious Tourism including:
• Pilgrimages
• Missionary travel
• Leisure (fellowship) vacations
• Faith-based cruising
• Crusades, conventions and rallies
• Retreats
• Monastery visits and guest-stays
• Faith-based camps
• Religious tourist attractions
It is the mission of the company to provide its clients with top quality tourism services catering to mind, body and soul through focus on niche area of Religious and Spiritual destinations. The company’s key aim is to deliver on single promise to our customers - "Deliver Great Religious and Spiritual Travel Experience through Technology and Services".
The founder director of the company carried her ambition of launching this online travel portal with online and offline booking platform. The unique thing about her website, which she believed was the core of the product, was the content and information of various religious places. The company has a facility to online book flights (International and domestic), over 500,000 hotels (International and Domestic), PAN India buses and Cab in over 260 cities in India. The company is equipped for all B2B, B2C, and B2B2C deals.
There are many websites which are specific to one religion but many few which provided information about all religious places of all the religions. The guiding information was of FICCI who had plans to build circuits like Hindu circuit, Sikh circuit, Buddh circuit, Jain Circuit, Christian Circuit, Sufi circuit etc. The website covers all the religions and all the circuits. Along with the information about a religious place, the website also has a booking platform to travel to that place. The purpose is to create a platform where the pilgrim should visit the website to get information about the place but should not leave the website to book the tour package from somewhere else. This is the complete help to the pilgrims in their faith based cruise.
Rachna says, “I want to build a brand which can make name in the field of religious tourism. I believe that the brand can only be built only if all the service partners contribute to the brand. This started my journey of meetings to add partners.
About Founder Rachna Gulati – Founder/Director of the company is finance professional with over 18 years of experience in the field of finance. All through her career, she has worked at varied levels in various multinational companies from where she realised a need to give shape to her passion. She decided to leave the routine job and take the tough route of becoming an entrepreneur. She has been awarded REX global fellowship and the Karmaveer Chakra for her ideas for action and not just talks.
The founder/director decided that the operations will not be started until the product is launched in the form of an online website. Though the company was incorporated in Oct 2014, the operations of the company started in early 2016 after the website was tested and launched. Focus was not on start earning fast but to offer a product which is useful for the customers. All these months (since inception), the energies were being focused on building a good product rather than starting to earn revenue. In a short span of time (couple of months), the company has gained visibility.
Although the financial institutions liked the idea of religious tourism, they didn’t have the confidence of funding a startup which has come up without any influential background. The financial institutions refused to provide working capital funding or investment capital fund. The founder decided to invest her life time savings and used her own money to start the venture. As she was the one having maximum faith in her idea, she was confident that she can surely give shape to her idea (even though it took 20 months to launch the website). At one point of time, the founder was ready to even mortgage her personal residential property to fund the venture but she could manage with the savings which she had. It is a bootstrap model and has been funded by the founder herself.
Company wants to build this brand as a brand of religious tourism. It handles only religious tours and is wishful to be religious tour partners for all. The company wants to gain reputation in terms of quality service in organising religious tours. The company wants to help the state tourism boards in promoting places which are still less visited and very few people know about those places. The company will publish the information of those places on its website and will help in organising tours to those places.
