September 2026 · Partnerships · 5 min read

Finding a Partner in India: Why the First Three Meetings Go Nowhere

Why a warm first meeting in Delhi or Mumbai rarely leads anywhere. Notes from building a partner network in India from zero.

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When I ran India and Asia business development for a travel group, the pattern repeated itself often enough that I stopped being surprised by it. A first meeting in Delhi or Mumbai would go well, sometimes very well. The agency owner or the business development manager across the table would nod, ask good questions, say the partnership made sense, occasionally say "we will definitely work together." Then nothing would happen for weeks. A second meeting, if it happened at all, would be vague. By the third meeting, if you were lucky enough to get one, you would realize you were talking to someone who could not actually approve anything.

Two failure signals: the wrong person and false warmth

The first reason is structural. A large share of Indian travel agencies and destination management companies, especially outside the handful of large corporate groups, are family owned or closely held. The person who greets you, who is often a business development manager, a sales head, or even a director with a real title, is frequently not the person who allocates budget or approves a new supplier relationship. That authority sits with the promoter, the owner, sometimes a parent or an uncle who may not be in the building the day you visit. You can have an excellent first meeting with the wrong person and it will not move anywhere until someone gets you in front of the right one, and nobody will tell you this directly. You have to ask, specifically, who signs off on a new supplier agreement, and ask it early, not after three meetings have already gone past.

The second reason is that warmth in a first meeting is not the same as commitment. Hospitality and agreement in conversation are part of how business is conducted in most of India, and a positive tone in the room is not a signal you should read as a yes. "We will definitely work together" said in a first meeting is closer to "I have heard you and I have no objection" than it is to an actual decision. The real signal comes later, in a second or third conversation, when the discussion moves from general interest to specifics: rates, allocation numbers, payment terms, cancellation policy. If those specifics never come up unprompted, the relationship is still in the polite phase, not the commercial one, no matter how many times "definitely" was said.

The quiet test and the geography trap

The third reason is that most agencies you approach are running an informal test on you before they commit real volume, and they rarely announce it. They will send one small booking, sometimes a single traveler or a small group, and watch how you handle it. The real evaluation is not your brochure or your rate sheet. It is what happens when that first booking needs a change at eleven at night Delhi time, or when a traveler has a problem mid-trip and needs a fast answer. I learned this by being on the receiving end of exactly that test more than once while building a partner network across South and Southeast Asia: an agency in Bangalore sent a small group booking with no fanfare, said nothing about future plans, and only opened up serious volume months later, after that one booking had gone smoothly through two modification requests. Nobody told me at the time that this was a test. It became obvious only afterward.

The fourth reason is geography and specialization, which foreign companies routinely underestimate. Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore are not one market. An agency's website and first pitch will often describe itself as pan-India, full service, everything to everyone, and the actual business will be concentrated in one specific thing: a Kerala-based operator that is genuinely excellent on South India backwater and houseboat itineraries and mediocre at everything else, a Rajasthan agency built around destination weddings with almost no general leisure business, a Gujarat-based agency whose real strength is MICE and corporate incentive groups tied to the state's manufacturing base. You find this out by asking what percentage of their business comes from which segment, a question most first meetings never reach because the conversation stays at the level of "we can do everything."

What actually worked on the ground

What actually worked, in practice, was slower than what a plan on paper would have suggested. Building a functioning partner agent network from scratch across South and Southeast Asia took real travel, not video calls: in-person visits mattered more in this region than anywhere else I worked, because trust here is built by showing up, sharing a meal, and being physically present when a problem needs solving, not by a polished deck sent by email. The agencies that mattered most a year later were rarely the ones that said yes fastest in the first meeting. They were the ones that tested quietly, watched the response under pressure, and only then opened the relationship up.

In practical terms, six months between a first meeting and the first meaningful volume was normal, not a sign that something had gone wrong. Companies that gave up after two quiet months, or that escalated to a formal proposal too early because someone felt entitled to a fast answer, usually lost the relationship entirely. The agencies that kept getting a friendly, low-pressure check-in every few weeks, with no ask attached beyond a shared meal or an update on a specific traveler's trip, were the ones that eventually opened up.

Treating the first meeting as reconnaissance

The practical lesson for anyone doing this work is to treat the first meeting as reconnaissance, not negotiation. Find out who actually signs, ask directly and early. Expect the real signal to come from specifics, not warmth. Expect to be tested with small volume before being trusted with large volume, and treat that first small booking as the most important account you have, because it is being watched more closely than any of your larger existing partners. And ask what an agency actually does best, not what its website says it does, because the gap between the two is where most first meetings quietly fail.

Updated: September 2026