Kahini Chakraborty – Mumbai
Abacus International will be acquired by Sabre in the third quarter of 2015. The acquisition is subject to regulatory approvals and other closing conditions. Jeet Sawhney, managing director, Abacus India told Express TravelWorld, “Sabre has been our long standing technology partner and shareholder. The outlook is therefore great, but until the transaction closes we are unable to comment further.”
Elaborating on the company’s product expansion, Sawhney informed, “By end of June, we will have cut over every Indian customer to Abacus WorkSpace, an open-source desktop designed for travel agencies to perform at the optimal level from front-end to back office, as well as aggregating all the agents’ content on one platform. The motive is the integration of up to 60 public and private Abacus Red Apps. Later this year, for the B2B2C retailing side of the business, Abacus ContentPlus will be launched.”
On the business growth in terms of travel agents adopting Abacus products, he said, “We are on plan in terms of revenue as we continue to expand. We now operate from 14 offices across India, with the network established to access and support more of the Tier II and Tier III markets. Currently, we are incentivising more hotel bookings. There is a promotion running now called ‘Book & Be Rewarded’ which applies to Abacus RoomDeal transactions between June 1 and August 31. For the first 15 bookings, Abacus travel agents in India will earn US$30. The rewards then scale with more business to US$1,000 for 500 bookings or more and there is a bonus draw for five mini iPads. The company also has a tie up with UniConnect wherein, Abacus is offering trade delegates SIM cards that can further be shared with their customers.”