BLS International expects visa application volumes to increase as markets like China open up

Despite increase in travel demand in the post-Covid phase, visa application volumes are not back to pre-Covid levels but as more international markets open up, companies like BLS International expect volumes to increase.

BLS International, the visa and immigration services firm from India expects visa application volumes to increase as China has opened up for travel.

“China has told us to open all our offices there. So, we expect there will be increase in volume (of visa applications),” said Shikhar Aggarwal, Joint Managing Director (JMD) at BLS International Services Limited.

However, he said that there is not much clarity in terms of timeline of reaching full recovery for visa application volumes as the travel demand to countries like Russia is still below pre-Covid level.

The company last year recorded 70 percent recovery versus pre-pandemic level in visa applications.

Aggarwal said that along with geographies like China contributing to companies’ revenue, the new contracts won by the firm will increase profitability. “As soon as we start deploying the new contracts we have won, we will see growth in revenue and profitability. The numbers we have achieved in the last quarter we will maintain that. We have cash in our books and we are looking at acquisition,” he said.

The company had reported Rs 448.63 crore in revenue in Q4 FY23 and profit after tax (PAT) of Rs 76.73 crore.

BLS International recently won new contracts and estimates the size of these contracts to be valued at $1.5 billion.

“The latest contract signed is with Italian embassy in Abu Dhabi, which means all the Italian visas out of Abhi Dhabi will be processed by BLS International, and this was earlier done by our competitor (VFS Global). We also won contract for Italian embassy in Senegal and we have to open around 3-4 offices in Senegal for all the people who want to got to Italy from Senegal,” he said.

He said that Italy as a client holds huge potential for the company as from Senegal the company can process around 25,000 to 30,000 visas applications annually. “On top of that there are 10-12 contracts that will come out by the Italian government soon so winning that will be important,” Aggarwal said.

The company had also bid to renew its contract for five years with the Spanish government. “The new category of visas called national visas have been outsourced to us which was earlier handled by the (Spanish) embassy. So, we expect growth in revenue from this contract as applications will increase and also we will be deploying offices in near geographies,” the JMD added.

There are more contracts that the company has won which are yet to be signed and they will be announcing them soon, he said.

The company has also seen marginal increase in its market share of one to two percent in the last one to two years from 15 percent competition to currently 17 percent. The global market leader in this space remains VFS Global, which has upwards of 50 percent market share globally.

As BLS International is expanding its services, the company is also hiring more talent. “We have started hiring through campus placement from IIT, IIMs to deploy them here (India) and take them globally. We will be hiring 500 people in different segments within the company in FY24,” Aggarwal said.