Shila Travels and Consultancy Services was founded 15 years ago by brothers Amit, Abhishek and Amitabh Keshav– and their sister Aarohi. Amit Keshav told us why they like to work only with Koreans.
Korea and India have many cultural similarities. Besides the fact that we both got independence around the same time, there was also a history of partition in both countries. People ask us why we don’t deal with other clients, but we like to specialise. People say, “Koreans are such rough people, how can you deal with them?” We reply that we are Bihari, so we are used to it.
My brother Abhishek was learning Tae Kwon Do – he wasn’t interested in studying but wanted to learn more advanced Tae Kwon Do in Korea. That’s where he learnt to speak fluently. Somehow the Korean embassy got to know this guy could speak the language – this is when Samsung etc were entering the country… So Abhishek got a job translating for Daewoo. I was in Patna and thought this was very unfair – he was earning in dollars while I was working so much harder! So I went and got a job in a travel agency to help him.
We don’t have any formal training in the language – we learnt through interaction. Our language consultancy is now used by corporates like HCL, Samsung etc to offer training in Korean, Hindi and regional languages. Our travel business is also good – JAL carries more Koreans than Japanese. We have a restaurant in Bihar, between Patna and Motihari, that serves authentic Korean, Japanese and Chinese food – and Korean visitors are very impressed.
We also organise film shoots. People come here to make documentaries to air in Korea. We are like a production line. We were involved in setting up the shooting of Gangster in Korea. And there’s another Bollywood project we’re involved with in Korea currently – but you can’t print the details! As told to Sonal Shah
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