Asad Siddiqui is presently the Founder cum Head of Faculty for ‘Niche Tourism Academy”. He was also a  Chief Product & Technical Consultant of ORN Trip Factory Private Limited (from 2017 to January 2021). Although he is a Cost Accountant with an MBA in Finance who started his career in a multi-national freight forwarding company, Asad’s fondness for nature contributed towards his wanderlust that inspired him to challenge his comfort zone and pursue an adventurous career in travel and tourism. Earlier on Asad had been the founder of two travel companies namely Sofia House of Tourism (2006-2013) and Catwalk Holidays Private Limited (2013-2018) before diversifying into other ventures that include Indian Film Services, Wooden Leaf Lodges & Resorts Private Limited, and his latest enterprise, Niche Tourism Academy.

 

 

Asad’s Mission

 

1.  Empowering over 5,00,000+ travel professionals with the right mix of skills, competencies, and robust domain knowledge so that they can perform in this industry with a competitive edge.

 

2.  Build the world’s largest package tour professionals network by preparing aspiring tourism professionals with the right training and education. Niche Tourism Academy is the first step to reach the goal.

 

A Journey that Revealed His Inner Call

 

Asad’s foray into the tourism business is an interesting twist of fate. It happened in 2006 when one of his friends requested Asad to accompany him in his quest for an off-beat holiday destination. He took Asad to Silent Valley Wilderness Camp, one of the holiday companies that specialized in off-beat tours. There Asad met for the first time Mr. Sahir M Latif, the owner of the company who was an exceptional off-beat tour advisor and had in-depth knowledge about package tour concept. Asad witnessed Sahir giving a vivid and captivating tour description explaining the travel itinerary to his friend. Sahir’s spellbinding narration triggered Asad’s passion for the tourism business. After this event, Asad decided to work in Silent Valley Wilderness Camp under Sahir’s mentorship to learn and gain experience.

 

Another game-changing experience also shaped Asad’s path to pursue his unique journey in the travel and tourism business. Around 1995, before his foray into tourism, Asad was working overseas in the accounts department for his freight forwarding company.  During this time Asad guided to develop accounting software with the help of Mr. Subramaniam, an expert in this field who spearheaded a software company. The concept of online tourism at this point in time was still new and distant for the people, especially in our country. However, these 3 months’ work experience at Silent Valley Wilderness Camp coupled with Asad’s knowledge and experience of developing customized accounting online in-house software during his tenure in the multi-national company gave Asad a unique competitive edge in the tourism industry in the future.

 

 In 2006, He Hit the Trail

 

Asad’s tourism career started in the year 2006, with the establishment of Sofia House of Tourism. He started his travel business as well as continued learning about tourism as a passion.  To enrich his learning he offered his ideas to his fellow industry professionals without any profit motive. He shared his insights with Mr. Amit Saberwal who was then associated with Make My Trip to develop tour packages of domestic regions.

 

Asad also discussed and exchanged his ideas with Mr. Rajiv Kalra when he was working on the project of setting up an online portal on a package tour known as Tripcrafters. Asad’s mantra was simple – impart knowledge to your prospective customers and make your product offerings unique.

 

In 2012, when the online travel industry gathered momentum, it witnessed the rapid growth of online air ticketing and online hotel booking. Companies like Via.com, Yartra.com, MMT, etc. started to emerge to capitalize on the opportunities in the online travel and tourism market.  In this scenario, companies like Holiday IQ, Hello Travel, and Tripcrafters which acted like online travel market places surfaced and made huge profits. It was during this time, the idea of “Customization of Online Package Tour” struck Asad and gradually this idea became his passion to take Indian tourism to the next level.

 

Important Landmarks in His Tourism Venture

 

As a travel and tourism aficionado, Asad specializes in both off-beat and conventional tourism to cater to all kinds of tourist preferences. However, as an adventurous tourist, he advocates all travellers to defy stereotype and travel to places which are lesser-seen and unconventional. Some of his landmark tourism initiatives that inspired passionate tourists to set out from the snug corner of their homes and travel to wild, exotic, and thrilling locations are summarized below:

 

Daringbari Expedition– Asad discovered Daringbari, the Kashmir of Orissa in the year 2006 with the help of Kishore Ranjan Mohanty and Anil Swain on the Indian tourism map. This exotic place settled in the lap of nature can offer the weary city souls a mix of wild yet soothing beauty of pine forests, waterfalls, beautiful valleys & plateaus with tropical forest with coffee & pepper gardens, and the land of one of the most ancient tribes of India “Kutia Kondhas”, is a perfect gateway for people who are looking for some time off from the mundane city life.

 

Antarctica Expedition– In India, Asad is the pathfinder of promoting Antarctica, one of the coldest, driest, and windiest parts of the world with the highest average elevation of all the continents along with the leaders of ‘Quark Expedition’. Around 2009, Asad procured the rights to sell this unique expedition package in India for a couple of years to bring a different flavour of adventure to Indian tourists.

 

Amazing Amazon Expedition– Asad took the pathbreaking tourism initiative to obtain exclusivity to promote and sell Amazon Rainforest Expedition packages in collaboration with Green Tracks for Indian tourists. Green Tracks is internationally renowned ecotourism and adventure expedition enterprise whose services are used by renowned multinational electronic media networks like Discovery Channel, National Geographic, British and Canadian Broadcasting Systems to name a few.

 

Polar Expeditions– Yet another trailblazing initiative by Asad wherein he interacted with Dr. Christian Adler – an esteemed South-German mountaineer, scientist, and a veteran guide of Polar regions who visited and studied indigenous people in the most remote regions on earth with a niche interest in ‘hunters and gatherers.  Dr. Adler is the founder of Polar Travel Exclusive Tours who travelled to far-off and remote destinations like the Arctic, N-Greenland, Svalbard, and East-Greenland among many others to add to his travel repertoire.  Asad convinced Dr. Adler to grant him exclusivity to conduct Polar Expeditions for the outlandish Indian tourists.

 

Arctic Ecotourism –Asad also collaborated with Bathurst Inlet Lodge to explore Arctic Ecotourism avenues in the Nunavut region, one of the largest unspoiled natural paradises on the planet, the arctic wildlife and the Inuit way of life, to explore the top of the world and be dazzled by the vivid dancing hues of the Aurora Borealis for the nature lovers. Asad still believes that this is undoubtedly the best Ecotourism in the world and the Indian tourist must have the opportunity to avail of this exclusive package.

 

As an unorthodox travel and tourism agent, Asad introduced in India innumerable unexplored travel destinations such as Arctic Ecotourism, Amazon River & Rainforest Tour, Machu & Inca’s Trail, Northern Kingdom, Antarctica, Arctic Expedition, North Pole, Greenland, Svalbard, Kamchatka, Patagonia, Iceland, Flying Safari Tour to South Africa, Southern Thailand like Railay/ Tonsia, Koh Lao Liang, Koh Phi Phi, Koh Yao Noi, Ao Nang, Similan, Tarutao, Laos Ecotourism, Tours Beyond Indonesia and Cambodia Ecotourism.

 

Despite his trend-setting tourism initiatives and a firm conviction that effective education and awareness about unconventional travel destinations will attract a large pool of zealous Indian travellers, Asad couldn’t gain significant success in these tourism ventures. Lack of adequate resources and funds prevented Asad from reaching out to places and create extensive tourism awareness in the market. However, in spite of these setbacks, Asad never lost sight of his vision. He established Niche Tourism Academy to train and prepare competent tourism professionals who will be the future ambassadors of his vision and bring about a revolution in the tourism industry in India and abroad.

 

Educating Aspiring Tourism Professionals – An Inflection Point

 

Asad’s extensive knowledge about travel and tourism also paved way for teaching opportunities in reputed institutions. He imparted destination management and package tour industrial training for the students of DSMS College of Tourism and Management for 4 years. This was his landmark step towards laying the foundation for a robust platform to educate and train competent talents for the future of the tourism industry. This event sowed the seeds of his visionary travel and tourism training and education venture – The Niche Tourism Academy.

 

His Journey on the Roll – Flagging Off Indian Film Services in 2014

 

Asad’s passion for nature, the environment, and travel manifested itself in several dimensions.  He decided to explore other creative mediums for bringing the inspirational stories of nature and nature lovers in to spotlight through films. His first film protagonist was Jadav “Molei” Payeng, an environmental activist and forest worker from Majuli who dedicated 23 years of his life for turning a 10 square kilometer of sandbar near Brahmaputra River into a flourishing forest. Payeng is also popularly known as the Forest Man of India. Asad, an ardent lover of nature who envisions taking ecotourism in India to the next level decided to produce a documentary film on this exceptional protagonist.

 

He teamed with Director Tamal Dasgupta to make a documentary film on The Forest Man of India titled “Soul of the Forest.” The film, “Soul of The Forest” received 11 Nominations and 6 Awards in different esteemed film festivals globally. In fact, in 2014 this was the only documentary in India that bagged the maximum number of awards. This film marked the onset of Asad’s journey as a film producer and documentary film distributor as well.

 

Driving His Vision with Trip Factory

 

Since 2012, Asad was preparing a worldwide product database to facilitate the implementation of the customization of the online tour package.  On the other hand, he continued to run his travel and tourism business as a zealous travel agent. In 2014, Vinay Gupta started Trip Factory after the grand success of Via.com, India’s leading Travel Services Company with a network of 17000 agents in 900+ cities of India. Vinay scaled VIA.com to 62+ countries in about 6 years. During this time Vinay Gupta, founder of Trip Factory organized a grand conclave where he invited around 200+ travel agents from all parts of India in Bangalore. Asad was a part of this summit where he discovered that he could play a key role in transforming Vinay Gupta’s vision into success with his research insights, database, and intensive knowledge to build customized travel software. It took Asad several attempts to meet Mr. Vinay Gupta and explain how he can contribute to fulfilling the objectives of Trip Factory. Asad was an integral part of this project for 4 years as a Chief Product & Technical Consultant of Trip Factory Pvt. Ltd.

 

Asad’s Vote of Thanks

 

After 15 years’ extensive experience as a travel and tourism professional, Asad believes that real heroes of the tourism industry are the ones who have root-level knowledge about their vocation. He/she may be a guide, a B2B owner, a travel enthusiast, a travel blogger among many others and Asad is grateful to every single one of them from whom he learned the tricks of the trade.

 

Asad earnestly thanks the invaluable contributions of all those people from whom he managed to learn directly or indirectly the secrets of tourism. Although it’s not possible to mention everyone’s name, Asad’s story will remain incomplete without acknowledging the key contributors to his 15 years journey namely, Mr. Himadri Protim Kakoty, Mr. Sandeep Lall, Mr. Lalit Bhist, Mr. Nikhil Avalani,  Mr. Subrata Mazumdar, Mr. Terence Cardoz, Mr. George of Green Tracks, Dr. Christian Adler of Polar -Travel Exclusive Tours, Mr. Cartoon of GM Holidays, Mr. Dave Williams of Paddle Asia, Mr. Aditya Mondal, Mr. Kishore Ranjan Mohanty, Mr. Anil Swain, Mr. Francesco Contini, Mr. Warner family and the Kapolak family and many more. Asad learned from many but he believes the mentor who played the pivotal role in driving him to pursue his dream career was Mr. Sahir M Latif.

 

Asad’s Credo

 

Asad believes success is not only about earning money but also about acquiring knowledge. It is his mission to build the world’s largest customized package tour online network by creating a pool of skilled and competent talents to facilitate the growth of the tourism industry.