Name Sam Jain | ||
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Occupation Fugitive (as of January 26, 2009) Net worth Under investigation by U.S. attorneys (2009) | ||
Sam S. Jain (born 1972) is an Indian-American entrepreneur, and is the founder of CheapOair, Fareportal, and FareBuzz. He was born in New Delhi, India, where he lived until the age of 19, when he emigrated to the US. He is currently the CEO of CheapOair, and resides in New York with his wife Vera and children.
Career
After dropping out of the University of Delhi, Jain moved to New York, as to expand his father’s jewelry export business into the US. Not finding success in that industry, he began helping some friends who had a home based travel agency. In 1994 he developed FareBuzz, a company that, at that time, aggregated negotiated airfares from wholesalers and then sold them to retailers. FareBuzz was launched with Jain's personal savings and a bit of money from his father, and in its early days Jain ran every element of the business himself, including sweeping the floors.
In 2002 Jain launched the travel industry technology company Fareportal. Fareportal began as a business-to-business company which built and sold an online consumer interface for retail travel agents, although it eventually developed into an umbrella company for a number of subsidiaries, which now include CheapOair, FareBuzz, OneTravel, Travelong, Duke’s Court Travel, Fareportal Media Group, RoyalScenic, ClubMiles, TripCombi and WKTravel.
In 2006 Jain founded the online travel agency CheapOair, as a subsidy of Fareportal. Seeing a lack of customer service phone numbers on other online travel agency websites, Jain made sure there was a contact number on every page, an innovation which distinguished CheapOair from its competitors, and was a key factor in their success. CheapOair has also focused on its primary business of selling air tickets, in an era where many online travel agencies are moving to focus on hotels. CheapOair has become one of the top five online travel agencies, processing ticket sales of US$ 4.5 billion in 2015.