In order to scale up the business, Bengaluru-headquartered Toehold Travel & Photography plans to introduce personalized photography tours for private groups. The company has recorded a growth of 20% in inbound travelers and 10% in outbound customers.
Jayanth Sharma, Co-Founder & CEO, Toehold Travel & photography, said, “For travel services, we have a gigantic footprint with tours to six out of the seven continents. We plan tours for more than 60 destinations every year and have 2,800 unique customers who have traveled with us in the past out of which a few hundred customers are repeat travelers. We are expecting more than 3,500 to 4,000 travelers for next year.”
Singh stated that the company started with an initial revenue of INR 1.2 crore in 2010-11 and has grown organically over time. In 2015, the company recorded INR 5.1 crore of revenue, which got boosted to INR 6.8 crore in 2016 and to INR 7.9 crore in 2017.
It recorded sales of nearly INR 9 crore in March 2018 growing at a rate of 12-13% annually. A large part of its sales happened in the tourism segment with both photography tours and leisure vacations contributing to nearly INR 6.5 crore of the total revenue up till March 2018. The camera rental division contributed to the remainder of the sales i.e. around INR 2 crore. The photography workshops and other smaller services contributed nearly INR 0.5 cr.
While talking about the travel pattern Singh said, “With the shifting paradigm of travelers, people used to take pictures because they were traveling but now they travel to take pictures. For us, travel and photography go hand-in-hand. While it’s not necessary to travel to take pictures, we live on such a blessed planet that there’s always something more to see and learn. Through traveling it gives us the opportunity to combine exploration and art into one seamless experience.”
This article appeared in Travel Biz Monitor on 27 July 2018