This is how India’s top CEOs travel

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All work and no play? Well, this adage doesn’t apply to the Indian CEOs. Most professionals being at the apex of todays multinationals are versatile. On one hand, they run the business as usual, on the other hand, they are normal human beings with penchant for adventure. And travel is something that not many can say no to. Of course, if the itinerary includes some safaris and forests, people can hardly refuse to such temptations.
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Making good use to this opportunity is Alankar Chandra, co-founder of Wild Voyager, a wildlife and nature tourism firm based in New Delhi. It offers wildlife and nature tours to India, Kenya, Tanzania, Sri Lanka, Iceland and Thailand. Incorporated recently, the clientele already includes CEOs of renowned start ups specialising in payment banks, fashion and retail.

This is the age of curated travel. Gone are the days, when people were happy with packages applicable to 20 other people. Time has changed and so have the people’s preferences. Just to make sure that each of the guests can travel according to their convenience, Wild Voyager curates travel to the wild.



While trips to Kenya, Tanzania, Iceland have already happened, Wild Voyager would soon be including Bosnia into its itinerary. This European country hasn’t been travelled much to. The former-Yugoslavian nation of Bosnia & Hercegovina (BiH) is a treasure-trove of architectural and natural beauty, which you can rediscover in your next trip with Wild Voyager.

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In an exclusive interview with Business Insider, Chandra said, the revenue model consists of charging a package price from the customers for a trip, which has all costs and our margins factored in. Essentially, it is same as any other tour operator, except that “we are different in the concept and our destinations as well as the clientele. We are funded under Startup India scheme by a PSU bank. We are recognized as a startup by the DIPP. To be honest, apart from the first month when we kicked off Wild Voyager, we have never really needed these funds as we get funded every month from our client trips."



How do CEOs travel?

“Typically, top executives prefer small boutique hotels over five-star chains with 100+ rooms when on holiday. The idea is to stay secluded and enjoy personalized service with their close friends and family. For example, we are in the process of booking a trip to East Africa for a CEO of a $500 million Indian conglomerate, and we gave them the options of staying at two places. The first one was Mara Serena, which is one of the best 5-star resorts within Masai Mara with 74 rooms, and the other one being Sanctuary Olonana camp which is a boutique award winning tent within Masai Mara having 14 tents, and our guest preferred the smaller one. These tents are situated beside the Mara river and provide personalized service to the guests, including made to order global cuisine, bush breakfasts, stories by local Masai tribes among other things,” said Chandra.

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Where do CEOs prefer to travel to?

“Since most of our outbound travel happens for Kenya and Tanzania, so these are the two countries where most top executives have travelled with us. For countries such as Iceland, we have been conducting road trips for landscape photography and as the participants also happen to be young photography enthusiasts, those cannot be graded as luxury trips,” Chandra told Business Insider.
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