Europe's eTraveller.

(From Business Today (India))

Byline: R. Sridharan, Supriya Srinate, Sahad P.V. and Dipayan Baishya

Europe's eTraveller

Like a lucky traveller, Dinesh Dhamija has mostly caught his boat on time. After landing up in the UK along with his diplomat father in 1968, Dhamija quit his job as a sales executive at IBM to launch a travel agency Flightbookers in 1983. When dotcoms became fashionable he launched one too (in 1999), called ebookers as the agency's arm, and even took it public, touching a stratospheric market cap of GBP400 million. Today, ebookers, while still loss-making, is Europe's largest online travel agency with business worth GBP500 million. And now, it has caught the BPO wind with a Delhi-based back office, Tecnovate. The 700-strong BPO, which started as a captive service provider for ebookers, plans to do work for other travel agencies. Says Dhamija, who is considered one of Britain's top 100 entrepreneurs: "An entrepreneur should be able to see a gap in the market, risk a financial disaster, and never take no for an answer." And sometimes it can take you places.

Dropping Anchor

So the stint as advisor to Tata Steel's managing Director, B. Muthuraman, did turn out to be what it was: a stop-gap measure. Rajeev Dubey, who had resigned last year as the Managing Director of the loss-making Tata company Rallis India, has begun the new year at tractor major Mahindra & Mahindra as Executive Vice President of Human Resources and Corporate Services. Is that a step down for a man whose previous full-time job was as the MD (he has also been the MD of another Tata company, Tata Metaliks) of a Rs 885-crore company? In terms of designation, certainly; but in terms of opportunities, maybe not. For, these are exciting times at M&M. Its snazzy SUV has given its passenger car business a new lease of life, besides which the company has ambitious global plans. That means Dubey, a Tata Administrative Services alumnus of 1975, will have his hands full, drumming M&M's hr into shape, among other things. Hope the chemistry works this time round.

Change of Taste