The minds behind Merair

Merair Travel and Tours is built on the working life of its founder, Mr Shakthivelu Mani.

He started the company in Jayanagar with a simple conviction: a travel desk should answer the phone. Fifteen years on, that is still the thing clients mention first. Merair holds IATA accreditation and issues airline tickets directly, which means no reseller sits between a company and the fare it pays. Getting that accreditation, and keeping it, is the part of the business he has never delegated.

Alongside him, Ms Anitha Shakthivelu, Director, holds the company together on the inside. She has shaped how the team hires, how it trains and how it treats people on a bad day, when a flight has fallen through at two in the morning and somebody has to fix it. The culture in the Jayanagar office is largely hers.

Between them they have grown Merair from a two-person operation into a desk trusted by more than 200 corporate travel teams, covering 120+ destinations and visa processing across 60+ countries. The company stayed deliberately small in one respect: every account still has a named consultant, and that consultant still picks up.