Nikhil Raghavan

When Nikhil Raghavan joined Jet Airways in 2004, internet technology in India was nothing to speak about. The iPhone was 3 years away from launch, Flipkart was not even a dream, Nokia & the Symbian operating systems dominated the market, and the Indian airlines industry was happy innovating at a snail’s pace.

Over the 15 years that he spent at Jet Airways, Nikhil developed a knack for spotting technology trends well before they became the norm, and accurately predicting changes in consumer behaviour. This helped him stay well ahead of the curve and create fantastic B2B & B2C web & mobile experiences, and consequently, helped push Jet Airways way ahead of the competition.

Under his watch, Jet Airways was the first in India to develop an airline e-commerce site, offer web check-in as an alternative to physical check-ins, build self-service kiosk check-in systems and offer a paperless mobile boarding experience. These projects were the bedrock of the superior digital customer experience offered by Jet Airways, and soon adopted as a standard by the rest of the industry.

Searching for his next challenge, Nikhil saw that much of the customer experience lay outside the purview of an airline - planning their trip, their ride to the airport, their stay at the destination, their local experiences - and a lack of access to relevant information about these was stressful for travellers, resulting in bad trips.

That's when he decided to launch Blinctrip - a connected travel ecosystem designed to help people have a great trip each time they travel.