Essel Group-owned Itz Cash Card Ltd is pursuing the vertical portals strategy and tying up with existing vertical leaders to drive traction in the B2B space. The online payment company, which has a prepaid card NoQ24x7, recently entered into an exclusive tie-up with online travel
firm Yatra.com to launch Itzmeriyatra (Itz.yatra.com). In addition to offering ticketing to customers through ItzCash's franchised ItzCash World outlets, users get online ticketing.
Itzmeriyatra follows Itz Cash's other "channel" portals such as Itzhotels.com in partnership with CCAvenue, Itzphoto.co.in in association with Picsquare (which was acquired by Infibeam),
ItzMobile.co.in where it has opted to tie up with leading cellular operators directly as with ItzDTH.com. ItzDTH.com is the oldest of the channel portals and has 50,000 registered users, according to the company. The company partnered with DTH operators including Sun TV,
Airtel Digital, Reliance's Big TV, sister firm Dish TV and Tata Sky for ItzDTH.com. Another channel site listed on the company website - ItzShop.com - has been shut down.
Naveen Surya, Managing Director, Itz Cash Card informed VCCircle that Itzcash has an overall active user base of 7 million with an average transaction amount of Rs 1,500 and the number of users of NoQ24x7 card has grown 30% from last year.
Itzmeriyatra
Itzmeriyatra is positioned as a B2B site and targets offline travel agents but will also be a B2C site, the company said. Though Yatra.com also offers car rentals, hotel booking and holiday packages, this partnership is limited to flight ticketing. Surya offered no comment on the decision. The company continues to partner with travel agency Thomas Cook.
The tie up helps Yatra.com, which competes with Cleartrip.com and Makemytrip.com, receive a boost in reach. Rajat Suri, Head B2B, Yatra Online said, “We are extremely happy to partner with ItzCash Card to offer an exclusive platform which empowers the pan-India distribution
network of ItzCash Card to offer travel services to their customers. This alliance will help Yatra.com reach out to the new and growing markets in metros and Tier II cities”.
