We are India’s largest guided walks/tours company, run as a Social Enterprise. Since 2002, we have been exploring rural and urban India, creating immersive and interesting walks and guided tours. We now offer over 300 experiences, ranging from heritage walks, bazaar walks, food trails, village visits, arts and crafts trails, textile trails, cycling, interactive cooking, and much more. Many of our tours have been co-created in partnership with local communities, to help keep cultural traditions alive, and bring incomes to the marginalized.
Apart from immersive guided tours, we offer end to end travel services, including transfers, hotels, ground transport, safaris, etc. We arrange private multi-city itineraries for discerning individual travelers; in India, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka.
We have a great deal of expertise in India familiarization / educational tours. Our clients include schools, colleges, international museums, charitable foundations and trusts, VIPs, heads of businesses, educationists, industrialists and professionals from all over the world.
Our corporate client list has more than 100 names, including Citigroup, Microsoft, Kellogg, TATA, Infosys, Deutsche Bank, PepsiCo, JP Morgan, IBM, Nestle, Lufthansa, and many more. We have done tours for the Guggenheim Foundation, BMW Foundation, Harvard, Stanford, University of Washington, Syracuse University, and many other schools and colleges from around the world.
We have a large network of knowledgeable guides, spread across the country. Our tours have been featured extensively in Conde Nast Traveler, Nat Geo Magazine, Forbes, The Guardian, and many other international and national magazines and newspapers.
If you would like to reassure yourself about the quality of our tours, there are more than 1000 independent testimonials on Tripadvisor, and we have won the Certificate of Excellence 5 years in a row now, for Mumbai Magic and Delhi Magic. We are listed in the Tripadvisor Hall of Fame for consistent excellence.
We are recognized by the Ministry of Tourism (Government of India), as well as the tourism board of Maharashtra, the state where we are domiciled; in fact, the government tourism department sells some of our Mumbai tours on their website.
We are a member of the Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO), this is the apex national body for travel agents in India, and we are required to abide by IATO guidelines for conduct and complaint resolution.
We use licensed guides; with the exception of some specialty tours like contemporary art trails, textile tours and cuisine tours, or where government guides don't have the specific expertise we want. Where possible, our tours are led by women - although in some cities, we are unable to hire women because there are no professional lady guides available.
Ms. Deepa Krishnan is a woman who wears many hats. She is the founder of Magic Tours of India, a responsible tourism company which provides training and employment for students from slums in Mumbai and Delhi. What started on a small scale in 2006 has now evolved into a successful pan-Indian company with 200+ people working across 27 cities in India. Ms. Krishnan has appeared in several travel and food television shows on BBC, iTV, Discovery TLC, the History Channel, and Times Food. Her tours have been featured in Conde Nast Traveller, National Geographic and many other global travel magazines.
Ms Krishnan is deeply interested in textiles and crafts of India. She is the founder of The Magic Room, a social enterprise committed to supporting Indian arts and crafts.
Ms. Krishnan also has deep interest in rural self-sufficiency and has been working on rain-water harvesting and micro-enterprise projects in 5 Warli tribal villages in Jawhar area near Mumbai. She was earlier the head of Abhyudaya, a non-profit that works with school children from slums in Mumbai’s K-West Ward. Abhyudaya's innovative practices won an award from the United Nations Global Compact Network for promoting SDG 4 Quality Education. Abhyudaya is an initiative of Bhavans SPJIMR, where Ms. Krishnan taught mentoring and leadership. Her academic research interests are in the area of urban slums.
Prior to her entrepreneurship and social sector work, she worked for 18 years in corporate sector, primarily in financial services technology, handling consulting and implementation projects across the globe for Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Barclays Bank. She has a degree in Commerce from Mumbai University and a business degree from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.
We believe that tourism can drive positive change; it can bring deeper understanding between different cultures, and provide economic benefits to local communities, especially disadvantaged sections. But that doesn’t happen by magic. To bring this change, tourism operators like us must actively work towards it. Otherwise, the effects of tourism can often be negative; especially in countries that have a lot of poverty. Secondly, tour operators like us have to be willing to stick it out in the long term. We must survive financially and we must ensure that our projects are permanent and sustainable. Short term vision leads to start-and-stop projects, which actually makes things worse for local communities. Our tourism policy is simple and practical: If our tours are responsibly and profitably designed, and our business remains viable in the long run, the benefits we want to deliver to the community will fructify and multiply. To this end, our sustainable tourism policy tries to create win-wins for all stakeholders.
We work with two nonprofits by training their students to run some of our tours:
- http://delhimagic.blogspot.in/2011/07/delhi-by-metro-tourgood-things.html
- http://www.mumbaimagic.com/mumbai_local.html
We have been working on a long-term project in rural self-sufficiency in the Jawhar area of Maharashtra. Earlier funded by tour incomes, this project has recently received solid support from IIM Women for Social Action, and is bringing hope and change to this area.
We have been trying to build socially responsible tourism “into the DNA” of the company, without making a big fuss about it. We do not see “corporate social responsibility” as a separate goal to be pursued. Rather, we wish to build a company that is inherently responsible. With this in mind, we finance, support and nurture several causes that we feel strongly about. If you’re interested, we’re happy to send you more information. Our methods of supporting these causes are innovative and interesting, and above all, practical and sustainable. We try to ensure that at least some of the money you spend on your trip to India goes to deserving causes.
If there is any more information you need, please do not hesitate to ask.