India Assist helps 350+ tourists

India Assist turned out to be an effective digital tool for foreigners stranded in India amidst the COVID-19 outbreak by providing real-time aid. Harish Khatri, Founder, India Assist, shares the story behind the mobile-based application and future plans f

For it all began when he was travelling to USA sometime in 2013-14. “I could see that there was a lot of excitement about travelling to India, but there was still this nagging fear of whether India was safe for tourists or not. To understand their apprehensions, I began researching on the support that was available if a tourist got into any distress situation and to my surprise, there was none. After returning to India, I discussed this idea with a few people and everyone said that there was a

Harish Khatri,

huge gap in the market. By mid-2015, we started working on this project. We identified a serious gap in the current travel and tourism landscape in terms of security and active assistance. We found a serious lack of a centralised system that could provide foreigners in India verified information and trusted assistance. We conceptualised and launched India Assist with a vision to bridge the gap and enhance the Indian experience for travellers,” he says.

At the core of India Assist is ‘empathy’, a guiding force behind the development of the product. Khatri explains, “Every service, action and initiative is focused on benefitting tourists in terms of making their life easy while they travel. This has ensured that we create a world-class product, a product which we would want to use ourselves as travellers. Our core product offering is the assistance and distress management service via a subscriptionbased mobile App. We provide help to travellers in India, which includes verified information and personalised assistance through our on-ground team, in medical emergencies, theft, loss, altercations and transit. The model of our product is on-ground assistance and human interface, and we help by allocating personnel to the tourist at their live location. We are also constantly working with our teams to ensure they are compassionate. Their motto is to ‘Help First’ and ensure the subscriber is put at ease and comforted.”

Sharing details of of services they

the kind offered to stranded foreigners at the time of COVID-19 outbreak in India, he adds, “India Assist supported foreigners with verified information, arranging food and shelter, helping them take evacuation flights during lockdown, even recharging their phones and sharing positivity. We responded to their queries and provided possible solutions in real time. Our technology has an in-built chat, which helps us address multiple queries at a time. It can capture live locations of tourists, which helps us provide on-ground assistance swiftly”

Their strategy for the future includes many new things. “Our plan entails creating an ecosystem for foreigners arriving in India, and becoming the most reliable information and assistance platform for them while they travel within India. At a micro level, we want the states to adopt this model and at a macro level, we want to venture into other countries as well. We also look forward to support from within the industry since we are not in competition with stakeholders.