When Bill Gates applied for a visa for a recent trip to Nigeria, his paperwork hit a snag. The Nigerian government required proof that the billionaire chairman of Microsoft would not stay in the country and become a drain on Nigeria's social services. The company helping him with his application, travel document expediter CIBT, obtained a letter from Gates' bank that reassured the Nigerian authorities, and the visa was approved.
More than 200 U.S. companies profit from helping travelers navigate the maze of documents they need to obtain visas and passports, according to Robert Smith, executive director of the National Association of Passport & Visa Services, the industry's trade group. While there isn't research available on the size of the passport and visa expediting services industry, Smith estimates it's a $150 million business in the U.S. alone. And as countries tighten their borders because of concerns about security and immigration, he expects that the market for such services will only expand.
CIBT has grown quickly. Originally founded in 1989, it had 60 employees and $15 million in revenue by 2003. That's when Jeffrey Fine, CIBT's chief executive officer, partnered with a private equity group to buy the business and lead an aggressive buyout strategy. CIBT has made 14 acquisitions in the last five years, and now has 560 employees and offices across the U.S. and Europe. Fine says CIBT processes about 800,000 visa and passport applications annually worldwide and expects 2007 sales to hit $135 million.
Fine's background in leveraged buyouts spans sectors from real estate to home health care. He describes the passport and visa expediting business as a highly fragmented industry where most of the players are mom-and-pop shops, making it ripe for consolidation. "Our ultimate goal is to create a global brand in visa and passport expediting," Fine says. What FedEx is to the U.S. Postal Service, Fine wants CIBT to be to passport services.
The changes in passport and visa rules have been a boon to the industry. Starting this year, U.S. citizens traveling by air are now required to have a passport to re-enter the U.S. from Canada, Mexico, or the Caribbean. And the Homeland Security Dept. plans to start enforcing the same requirement for U.S. citizens traveling by land and sea as early as January, 2008, as part of its "Western Hemisphere travel initiative." The new rules have increased the demand for U.S. passports from 13 million applications last year to an estimated 16 million this year, according to the State Dept.
Getting a U.S. passport through the normal channels can take 10 to 12 weeks. Even the government's expedited service takes two or three weeks. Travelers who urgently need passports in less than two weeks can make an appointment to visit one of the government's 13 Passport Agency offices in person. But for many applicants, companies like CIBT save time and headaches. The expediter can get customers' passports in one week, three days, or even 24 hours, for fees ranging from $50 to $100 on top of the government's normal processing fees.
How does it work? Passport expediters are registered with the government and allocated a limited number of slots to process urgent applications. The company makes sure all the paperwork is in order, delivers it to the agency office, and obtains the passport. Because the number of slots is limited, expediting passports is a tough business for new players to enter, Fine says. "It's kind of like a country club, because they say they're only going to expedite a million [applications], and those million are allocated right now," he says.
Many of CIBT's customers are corporate travel departments or cruise ship and tour operators—clients who need a large number of applications processed at once. Other customers are individuals traveling on short notice for funerals or family emergencies.
Even with the growing demand, passports make up only 20% of CIBT's U.S. business, Fine says. (CIBT expedites only U.S. passports, but processes visas for all nationalities.) The company's bread and butter is foreign visa applications. With roughly 200 passport-issuing countries in the world, each with different visa rules, expediters have to keep track of myriad combinations that each require particular—and often mind-boggling—documentation.
Add to that factors such as whether people are traveling for business or leisure and whether they need single-entry or multiple-entry visas. "It creates tens of thousands of combinations of visa and passport requirements," Fine says. "That's why companies outsource to us, because there's a lot of content to be aware of."
CIBT doesn't expect that to change any time soon. If anything, Fine says, he thinks terrorism concerns will make the paperwork needed for international travel more complicated. He plans to continue the company's aggressive acquisitions and open offices in more countries. "It's a highly scalable business and therefore you can achieve good operating margins the larger you become."
More at:http://www.us.cibt.com/
Via-http://uncommonbusiness.blogspot.com/
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Youlicit
What Company says:
Youlicit's underlying premise is that of reducing information overload using collaborative filtering.
We gather data from our users as well as other sources of user annotated web data (from social bookmarking sites such as Del.icio.us, other collaborative filtering sites such as Digg and Amazon, "people-generated" classifications of sites, and a multitude of other sources) to return the most recommended and relevant websites for the topic you are interested in. All this is provided to you, the user, with a simple and easy-to-use web browser plug-in that lets you find the most similar & recommended sites to the site you are on with a click of a button.
So how are we different from the other search engines such as Google or Yahoo! or MSN?
Simple. While the other search engines return sites based on algorithms that determine the popularity of a site with other sites (how many web pages link back to the web site among other things), our unique algorithm processes the sites that people are finding important and interesting and providing you with just those results.
More at:http://www.youlicit.com/about.aspx
Youlicit's underlying premise is that of reducing information overload using collaborative filtering.
We gather data from our users as well as other sources of user annotated web data (from social bookmarking sites such as Del.icio.us, other collaborative filtering sites such as Digg and Amazon, "people-generated" classifications of sites, and a multitude of other sources) to return the most recommended and relevant websites for the topic you are interested in. All this is provided to you, the user, with a simple and easy-to-use web browser plug-in that lets you find the most similar & recommended sites to the site you are on with a click of a button.
So how are we different from the other search engines such as Google or Yahoo! or MSN?
Simple. While the other search engines return sites based on algorithms that determine the popularity of a site with other sites (how many web pages link back to the web site among other things), our unique algorithm processes the sites that people are finding important and interesting and providing you with just those results.
More at:http://www.youlicit.com/about.aspx
Shopatron Got $6 Million from Kern Whelan Capital and Rivenrock Capital
What Company Says:
Shopatron is the leading provider of retailer-integrated e-commerce solutions, allowing branded manufacturers to accept orders online and fulfill them through their retailer or dealer channels.
Shopatron serves the needs of manufacturers, retailers and consumers, allowing consumers to purchase online from their favorite brands and still receive the service and convenience of interacting with a retail store, whether the product is shipped or picked up in a nearby store.
How Much The Got From VCs:
Shopatron received $6 Million from Kern Whelan Capital and Rivenrock Capital.
About Company:http://www.shopatron.com/on/
Shopatron is the leading provider of retailer-integrated e-commerce solutions, allowing branded manufacturers to accept orders online and fulfill them through their retailer or dealer channels.
Shopatron serves the needs of manufacturers, retailers and consumers, allowing consumers to purchase online from their favorite brands and still receive the service and convenience of interacting with a retail store, whether the product is shipped or picked up in a nearby store.
How Much The Got From VCs:
Shopatron received $6 Million from Kern Whelan Capital and Rivenrock Capital.
About Company:http://www.shopatron.com/on/
A Startup "DIAL 1298 FOR AMBULANCE - has received $1.5 million funding from New York’s Acumen Fund
What They Are Offering:
1298 Dial for Ambulance, is an initiative started by a group of young professionals with a high degree of social and public commitment with the primary objective of rolling out a nationwide network of Life Support Ambulance Service accessible to anyone, anytime and anywhere through an easy to remember four digit telephone number.The project has been setup in association with London Ambulance Service, a UK Government Agency, which has provided the processes, systems, protocols, training and project implementation assistance to ZIQITZA.
The Vision
To assist saving human lives by becoming the leading network of Basic life support Ambulances in India.
How Much They Got From VCs:
DIAL 1298 FOR AMBULANCE - has received $1.5 million funding from New York’s Acumen Fund. Acumen is a nonprofit venture fund which invests in “sustainable, scalable solutions addressing poverty in South Asia and Africa”.
Acumen has made the investment in Ziqitza Healthcare Limited (ZHL), which owns the ambulance service. It plans to roll out a nationwide network of life support ambulance service, essentially filling in a gap in the emergency medical support in Indian cities.
About Company detail:http://www.1298.in/
About Funding :http://www.acumenfund.org/
1298 Dial for Ambulance, is an initiative started by a group of young professionals with a high degree of social and public commitment with the primary objective of rolling out a nationwide network of Life Support Ambulance Service accessible to anyone, anytime and anywhere through an easy to remember four digit telephone number.The project has been setup in association with London Ambulance Service, a UK Government Agency, which has provided the processes, systems, protocols, training and project implementation assistance to ZIQITZA.
The Vision
To assist saving human lives by becoming the leading network of Basic life support Ambulances in India.
How Much They Got From VCs:
DIAL 1298 FOR AMBULANCE - has received $1.5 million funding from New York’s Acumen Fund. Acumen is a nonprofit venture fund which invests in “sustainable, scalable solutions addressing poverty in South Asia and Africa”.
Acumen has made the investment in Ziqitza Healthcare Limited (ZHL), which owns the ambulance service. It plans to roll out a nationwide network of life support ambulance service, essentially filling in a gap in the emergency medical support in Indian cities.
About Company detail:http://www.1298.in/
About Funding :http://www.acumenfund.org/
TryThis.com is a new player on the question & answers scene that wants to help you find answers to just about anything
What Company Says:
TryThis.com is a new player on the question & answers scene that wants to help you find answers to just about anything, and give you easy to locate recommendations while you’re at it.
How It Works:
Started by two friends, who left their jobs at a hedge fund, the site is easy to navigate, and community driven. Say you need to know a unique food item to take to an apartment warming, ask your question, and people can not only answer you, but embed a Google map showing you where to get what they suggest. Ask for a good documentary to watch, and people can reply with their answer as well as an image of the cover of the DVD or a poster for the film.
The site is wide-open as to what you can ask about, be it restaurants, movies, bars, books, music and more.
more at:http://trythis.com/
TryThis.com is a new player on the question & answers scene that wants to help you find answers to just about anything, and give you easy to locate recommendations while you’re at it.
How It Works:
Started by two friends, who left their jobs at a hedge fund, the site is easy to navigate, and community driven. Say you need to know a unique food item to take to an apartment warming, ask your question, and people can not only answer you, but embed a Google map showing you where to get what they suggest. Ask for a good documentary to watch, and people can reply with their answer as well as an image of the cover of the DVD or a poster for the film.
The site is wide-open as to what you can ask about, be it restaurants, movies, bars, books, music and more.
more at:http://trythis.com/
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