Thomas Cook India will soon obtain a clearance from its UK-based holding company Thomas Cook to go ahead with its expansion plans. The parent company holds 40 per cent equity in the Indian operations. The rest is with public, financial institutions and the FIIs.

Currently, Thomas Cook India operates in Mauritius and Sri Lanka besides India.

As per the expansion plan, the company will start operations in Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Seychelles, Maldives and Myanmar. Later it will look at other countries.

A senior company official told The Financial Express,``We plan to focus on business outside India also. We already have operations in Mauritius and in Sri Lanka, which have turned out to be quite successful.''

``Now we plan to foray into other countries which are primarily of tourist or business interest. To begin with, we have zeroed in on half-a-dozen countries where we plan to start operations shortly.''

The official said, ``Forex will be our main area of focus followed by leisure travel and economy travel packages. We will also start working on business travel packages.''

The company will commence work on starting operations in these six countries as soon as it obtains a licence from its parent company in the UK.The CEO and managing director of the company Ashwini Kakkar was not available for comment.

The official said, ``We have already asked our holding company to grant us the necessary clearance so that we can go ahead with our plans before the end of this financial year - April-March 2001, keeping in mind the season.

The company expects its revenues to go up by 25 per cent within the first year of its operations in these countries.We chose these countries because most of them attract tourists throughout the year and they look very promising. Tourist inflow translates to forex business. It also means leisure and economy travel packages.''

Commenting on the recent takeover of Thomas Cook by German Group - C&N Touristic Ag, the official said the Indian operations will continue to function without any changes.

He said as C&N is a joint venture between Lufthansa and Karstad Quelle, the resources of these companies will help Thomas Cook in its future operations. India will also be benefited by this takeover, he added.