India’s Verteil Technologies has facilitated what it claims is the “first live NDC transaction from India”.

Its NDC-based Verteil Direct Connect platform is live with British Airways, and the ticket was a Chennai-London flight, booked by Magellan Travel.

When pressed on the claim that NDC is now live in India, founder Jerrin Jos told tnooz that he was “pretty confident” about it.

“Certainly, it is the first live NDC-enabled booking BA has taken in India and I don’t recall any public announcements from airlines or agencies in the market about real live bookings.”

His co-founder Ranjit Kurian added that “NDC is all we have been doing since we set up Verteil last year and we have been following developments in the Indian market very closely and haven’t seen anything comparable.”

Verteil has IATA NDC-Level 3 status and its tie-up with Magellan is through the agent’s membership of the 1,400 strong IATA Agents Association India (IAAI), with whom Verteil has an exclusive partnership to provide access and distribution of NDC direct connect products from airlines.

Jos is optimistic that more IAAI agents will come onto the VDC platform, at the same time as more airline NDC APIs are integrated. He mentioned conversations taking place with other airlines such as Lufthansa Group, American and Emirates.

Agents booking a BA flight through the Verteil connection will not incur the charge BA is imposing on any bookings made through indirect channels.

Kurian also added that while Verteil is currently concentrating on India, he believes the platform is scalable and is looking at other APAC markets, with Japan of particular interest.