The Hindu Business Line : Biz in their backpacks

Both of them shared a passion for travel, but of the kind that doesn’t adhere to organised or package tours. In the early 1990s, when he first started travelling abroad, Internet was not common. “So we’d go and ask somebody: ‘You’ve gone to London; so how do I get out of London, what is the bus or train system like there? We’d go to the British Council and browse through information. Anybody with any information on the place we wanted to visit and we would simply latch on to that poor guy!”

Yogesh M. Shah

Meet Yogesh M. Shah and his wife Suchna Hegde-Shah, who have translated their passion for travel into a business venture called The Backpacker Co. Yogesh has been backpacking and travelling across India and other countries ever since he got a licence and a passport. Suchna had earlier worked with Singapore Airlines as a cabin attendant for five years. “We loved to travel even before we met; our gallivanting gave us a clutch of skill sets and all the time people we knew kept asking, ‘I’m going to Croatia where do I stay?’ or ‘I am going to Budapest, what do I do there?’”

They were only too happy to oblige, but at some point “we found we were doing this more than anything else. So we said let’s put it together as a business model and The Backpacker Co was started two years ago, even though it has been running informally for four years”, says Yogesh.

The beginning

Though they married only in 1999, “we were seeing each other for a couple of years, we were travelling together even before that.” But more than museums or art shows, they would observe people, mingle with the locals, go for the smaller festivals like the Glastonbury festival, or the ‘Running of the bulls’ event in Pamplona, Spain, “where the bulls run across the village and you run with them.”

Obviously such tours require time, and Yogesh’s initial tours would last two months; part of the budget coming from his father, who runs a logistics business in Mumbai.

He is a vegetarian and “she eats anything that walks. But we’re not fussy or picky about food. Apart from dining at wayside restaurants, the places where we stayed normally had kitchenettes so we would go and buy local produce and make our own pastas, or sandwiches.”

Home stays were preferred too; on average they would set aside a budget of $15 a person a day for stay and an additional $15 for food; the benchmark for a day was $40 a person. “Today, a similar experience would cost around $65,” he says.

Favourite haunts

Both love Europe as a travel destination; his favourite city is “Barcelona, which is simply mind-blowing; it is so full of life and I love the level of activity there. When we travel, we don’t have a sense of structure and spontaneously get onto a bus and explore the place,” says Yogesh.

But Suchna’s favourite haunt is Paris, for several reasons. “There is so much to do there and yet you can do nothing too! I remember an entire day I spent in Paris just sitting in a park with a baguette, a bottle of wine and a great book to read. I love people-watching; it’s so much fun and helps you to really discover the place,” she says.

Her husband thinks “she loves Paris because she is such a foodie”, and Suchna agrees. “You can discover various kinds of cuisine in Paris — from a Michelin-rated restaurant to the eclectic food from North African countries, to just a simple croissant and Espresso at a roadside café; it’s all available there.”

Also, in Paris she loves going to the smaller art galleries as well as the Jardin du Luxembourg (the Luxembourg Gardens) “where it looks like the entire city of Paris comes to read and relax.” Her first trip here was in 1998 and she tries visiting it “every two years to recharge my batteries”.

The travel outfit started initially with a conscious effort to keep the overheads low; meetings would take place at a Barista or Café Coffee Day outlet. They began operating from home with a laptop and through word of mouth. “We couldn’t afford an office and nobody would lend us money. So we started off small, and as we started getting known, faith money came in from people we knew.”

Next they approached some venture capitalists “but none of them opened the door because we didn’t have the IT tag on us! But that was lucky, or else we would have sold very cheap. But now we are talking to a couple of people… or rather they have approached us. This market is growing and we have the first-mover advantage,” says Yogesh. Currently they have an office only in Mumbai and plan to open branches in Bangalore, Delhi, Pune and Chennai.

With the educated middle class growing in number, they cater to a cosmopolitan segment from across the country. And most of their clients are youngsters, in the 25-35 age group. “These people are making money and want to go around and see the world. It is no longer work, work, promotion, work, work, promotion. They are saying, ‘Boss, I have only one life to live and I might as well live it well’,” says Yogesh.

The most popular destination continues to be Europe, says Suchna; “our forte is outbound rather than domestic travel and a first-timer wants to see different places in Europe with one trip. Spain, France, etc; they want to sample three different countries, cuisines, people, history and cultures.”

Women customers in majority!

Surprisingly, most of their customers are women, and the ratio is 70:30. A lot of single women are travelling and “we structure independent or experience holidays for them. For instance, we have tie-ups with farmhouses in Tuscany — we’ve just sent a friend for a cooking holiday to Tuscany. You learn to cook; a few hours in the morning and the evening to learn Italian cooking from a good chef and during the day you can just walk or cycle around the villages,” she says.

Such a holiday, adds Yogesh, can cost around €700-800. “A lot of variables come into play; what we run is a very personalised, independent business. We don’t cut, paste and give you a holiday; it is tailor-made to what you want.” A budget tour can be done on $65 a day; for those who splurge “the sky is the limit.”

In these holidays you don’t get escorts “because if I tell you what to do, then you are not ‘discovering’ anything!” Apart from Europe, Australia and New Zealand are popular destinations too.

But do people always follow their guidelines to pack light?

“Well, we can only give guidelines; at the end of the day it is their backs and there are no porters in Europe! But we haven’t had anybody who said there wasn’t anyone to carry their bag!” He adds that they prefer to send out small groups because people who travel in large groups prefer to be among themselves rather than go out and discover the place.

“Also, if you say I’m alone and want to travel, we put you on to a whole database of people who also want to travel,” says Yogesh.

Memories from their travel are plenty. Suchna will never forget the day in Lisbon when on her first “backpacking trip” with Yogesh, “I took my lovely, huge Samsonite suitcase, so that I could take home my souvenirs safely! He had only a backpack and the poor soul ended up carrying my suitcase up three floors to hostels. That trip was really funny!”

Obviously, for her, one is sure!

Yogesh remembers clearly the stay at a camping village in Rome “which had ostriches, emus, etc. The bathrooms were a bit out and in the morning as I walked towards one with my toothbrush I got chased by an emu!” And, at a home-stay in a village outside Lisbon, they noticed “a white canopy with a lot of chairs. And guess what we saw there? A proper sat sangh was happening there!”

The final word to the wife in an outfit where 70 per cent clients are women. On how they first met, Suchna says: “We met because both of us had sand on our feet and loved to travel. Introduced by common friends, we just hit it off. And Yogi was the one who ran halfway around the world trying to convince me that we were soulmates. Though now he likes to believe otherwise!”

Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in

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