IV Associates offers exhaustive details on visa information, complete documentation, help addresses, contacts of chambers of commerce and tourism boards, climate, weather, health, passport, medical insurance, reciprocal visas for foreign nationals coming into India and airport facility details. The site is currently providing downloadable 490 types of visa application forms of 201 countries that permit such a facility. It has been developed with an eye on the travel operators as much as the individual travellers.

Upon accessing the site, the viewer will be able to access information indicators for various travel facilitation aspects. "We understand the importance of new technologies and how they can benefit the trade. ESS has actively been working at marketing online automation tools which in real terms actually provide online services for the travel trade and the traveller," said ESS chief executive officer Ankur Bhatia, who is also the chief executive of coomputerised reservation system (CRS) company Amadeus.

ESS has already been marketing a hotel property management system and a point of sale system from Hogatext of Europe. It has a similar tie-up with PowerOffice for marketing its travel agency accounting package. He also claimed that the site was the first of its kind to provide under one umbrella complete visa information for all Saarc nationals.

``Based on feedback from our international associates, research is underway to check feasibility of providing visa information for a global traveller, that is from any country to any other,'' said Bhatia. He plans to offload 35 per cent equity in ESS to a strategic investor over next few days and offer another 20 per cent later through an initial public offering. However, Bhatia declined to disclose the level of investment he is seeking. ESS is part of his Bird Group which has interests in travel and technology.