refundme.in is India’s first, flyer’s right protection and Compensation management company that helps passengers / flyers get compensation from airlines if and when their flight is cancelled or delayed or denied booking. The company has helped over approx 100 passengers settling a claim of over Rs 1,80,000 since its inception.
Akanksha Anshu, a Travel Technology & Business professional was working at an IT company. She was responsible for formulating and implementing advanced technology and business solutions to meet a diversity of needs of Travel Companies. It was in early 2015, she met Eve Buchner, Founder of refund.me GmbH, a company that helps passengers get compensations in Europe. Their conversations deep dived on how the aviation industry is taking advantage by not paying compensation to the passengers who were involved in incidents of denied boarding, overbooking and flight delays and cancellations.
This conversation prompted Akanksha to do her research on the gap holes that exist in the Indian aviation and to build a better understanding of the rules and regulations laid down by the DGCA. She spoke to multiple experts from the airline industry, lawyers who work in the aviation sector, Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) and various passengers to understand the nitigrities involved on various aspects.
In July 2016, refund.me India in a Joint Venture with refund.me GmbH started its operations in India with Akanksha Anshu as a Co-founder & Managing Director and Eve Buchner as the co-founder & Director.
An industry pioneer, refundme.in is helping passengers get their compensation from airlines when there's an incident that is being reported of a flight delay / cancellation and denied booking. According to DGCA regulations, there is no compensation for flight delays but if the delay is of more than 24 hours it is considered as a cancellation. Hence a passenger is applicable for the compensation.
The company works with a team of legal experts / lawyers, who, post studying the issues in line with the DGCA rules and regulations helps the passengers get their due compensation. As per the rules & regulations of DGCA, a passenger is liable to receive a compensation up to Rs 20,000 depending on the incident. Passengers can claim compensation for upto last 1.5 year through refundme.in.
refundme.in is a bootstrapped company and doesn't have any funding as of now. That said, the company is in conversations with multiple industry players and is actively looking out for investments.
The company charges a passenger 25% fee of the compensation paid out. If no compensation is received, the company does not charge the passenger. The company’s policy is NO WIN NO FEE.
refund.me India also owns a subsidiary technology domain, Quantum Softech, that focuses at research & development and building solutions for the aviation and Travel technology industry. The company’s approach is passenger centric. The company is working towards evolution of technology and its automation with a vision to make Air Travel a hassle free mode of transportation.
To cater to the vision and help the passengers, the company will be launching more products and services that will look at addressing various aspects of taking a flight.
refundme.in is a one-of-a-kind flyer’s Compensation Management Platform which is new to the Indian Market. As of now, there isn’t any player in this domain apart from refundme.in and it has a definite leverage here.
It’s implementing a three-step Marketing Strategy to expand its business:
1. The first step is to educate the travellers that flight cancellations and denied boarding are not one-off instances anymore. In the past year itself, more than 1.8 lakh people were affected by these issues and as customers, we should be more vigilant towards these problems.
2. The next step is to create awareness among customers about their own Air Passenger rights. Passengers in India are ignorant or have little information about their rights with respect to Air Travel. They are not aware that they are entitled to some compensation (depending on the incident) in addition to their refunds and are not habitual to following up on this at all. This is the biggest challenge and refundme.in is working on bringing about a change in the consumer habit.
3. The company wants to encourage customers to take up their claims and compensations without fearing due legal processes, as is the norm in the Indian Community at large. refundme.in is there to help passengers with the entire process and subsequently helping them get the compensation they deserve.
refundme.in has taken an aggressive approach to their Marketing Strategy, starting with and building on their Social Media Communication. They have and will continue to target many more conventional and unconventional channels of communications and are working on multiple campaigns to enhance their reach.
As per the DGCA
website, there is remarkable growth in the airline passenger in past one year. Passengers carried by domestic airlines during Jan 2017 were approx 95.76 lakhs as against 76.55 lakhs during the corresponding period of previous year thereby registering a growth of 25.13 %. As per the statistics shared by DGCA, the compensation market size of Denied boarding and Flight cancellations cumulatively add up to approximately Rs 1 Billion annually; this does not include the flight cancellation statistics.
refundme.in is addressing the Rs 1 billion market size. Although, there are major challenge to compute the average Market Size :1. Lack of awareness as few cases of denied boarding are registered.
2. No standard break-up for the Ticket Cost, DGCA regulation says that compensation would be up to Rs 20,000 as per the rule applicable or the sum of base fare plus fuel surcharge whichever is less, but base fare could be either Rs 1 or Rs 50 which makes it is very difficult to calculate the average of compensation.
