Licence to passport, VFS Global will soon introduce citizen services: CEO Zubin Karkaria

If there is like a ten-fold increase in one year suddenly, then it becomes difficult. But year-on-year, if there is a 15-20% growth, I think it can be managed.

There were allegations in the Lighthouse Reports investigation about appointment-slot irregularities and pressure to buy premium services. What steps have you taken to improve services and bring down complaints?

There was no EU investigation as was claimed. We have been working with so many governments for the last 20-25 years. The governments themselves do thousands of audits on the system around the world. We work in 168 countries. The level of SOPs, technology, security and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation, the European Union’s privacy and security law) that we have to put in is huge. We would not be the number one in the world in this business today, if we had something that you are talking about. Now, when you handle 32 million visas, and another 30 million, say, citizen services, if you have four or five people complaining because something went wrong, that doesn’t make that the main cause.

We have a very strict zero-tolerance policy. If we find out that something is wrong somewhere, or a guard outside is telling somebody that I can get you a visa or something, he is sacked on the spot. We have strong compliance and governance in our organisation. We have 20,000 people in 168 countries.

We don’t compromise on security, we don’t compromise on customer centricity, we don’t compromise on anything — that is a regulation. We have 10,000 audits every year. Why? Because, for me, it is important that the governments that I work with trust me. They check, they do mystery audits, they do ISO audits, they do GDPR audits.

VFS handles extremely sensitive personal and biometric data for millions of people. Have you been able to tackle issues about data security and application processing. What concrete safeguards can applicants expect?

We don’t keep any data. If somebody is saying data security, all my machines in the front line are called dumb terminals. Nobody can download it. Nobody can save or print.

When I take your fingerprints, you put your fingers, you put your passport, and you put your face. And, there’s a camera over there, where there’s somebody from the embassy actually watching. They record everything. As soon as a person gives that, and everything is green, that means I have taken everything properly. Then with a press of a button, it’s gone out of my system. No, I am not keeping biometrics.

We have so many security systems even on a van that carries passports. If they don’t go by the same route, we will know on our system that this van is going in a different route. We will call the driver immediately. If that van stops for more than five minutes, somewhere, a flash will happen on the screen. This van, taking passports to a visa centre or to a consulate, is stopped.

I don’t have the data. I don’t store any personal details. I only keep your name, telephone number and address till the time I return your passport. After that, automatically it’s erased from the system.

How many centres do you have in India? Are you planning to open more centres?

In India, we have more than 200 centres. We opened one in Lucknow last year. We are planning to open one in Odisha. In Bhubaneswar, we opened. So, people from tier 2, tier 3 cities are travelling more and more. (But) I cannot do anything without the permission of the embassy. Their officers come and check our premises. They approve the premises. They approve the staff also. Every staff in my office working for any country is approved by that country.

Do you think Artificial Intelligence will change the way the traditional visa centre model works?

It’s not something new for us. We have been working on AI products for the last three years. We have already deployed AI products for eight governments across 1,200 routes. Before we started on AI, what we did was we tried with Responsible AI. This is an institute in America, which audits the way you do your AI. So that’s the first certification. Second, we build guardrails. That means we can only do this, we can’t do that. We created our own LLM, large language model.

AI helps to understand forgery. AI helps to stop people using the wrong means to take appointment slots. Because agents or people who were taking appointments were putting their photographs with a different name and manipulating the system to block slots. We have a facial recognition system. If the person is not standing there and the passport face is not matching, you won’t be able to block slots. AI helps us with these types of things, in detecting frauds.

When you are submitting your application, you get a lot of papers that are asked for in your visa. Now you can give 10 pages of a bank statement. AI will tell the visa officer whether the bank statement is genuine or there is an anomaly in the figures.

Will your workforce come down because of AI deployment?

Not so soon. Because we are continuously expanding. My business will grow. The workforce may remain the same. I would rather look at it that way.

If you want to change one thing about the global visa system, what would it be? And why?

What I would like to do is work with the governments to make it more efficient and increase the reach. But at the same time, keeping the security parameters, I would always push for biometrics to be taken before the person travels. The simple reason being when you take biometrics before the person travels, it ensures the person travelling is genuine.

If you want secured mobility, if you want your borders to be secure, biometrics are very critical to be taken before the person flies to the country.

What are the VFS growth plans in the next 2-3 years? And do you have any specific plans for India? Making it bigger or a listing on the stock exchange?

We started with a Mumbai Visa Centre at Breach Candy, at Tirupati Apartments 25 years ago. We created VFS in 2001 with three visa centres, with 100,000 applicants. My first customer was the US State Department. Now we are at almost 30 million visa applicants a year. We have 71 governments we work with. We are physically present in 168 countries of the world with 4,400 visa centres across.

We invest over $100 million a year in technology. We are focusing on mobility… making sure trade improves because when we increase mobility and people travel, automatically the trade improves because it’s not only people going for tourism, people are going for business.

The visa and passports that we do, which is huge, will continue to grow. Sixty per cent of the visa business is still not outsourced. It’s still done by the governments themselves. So, there is a huge upside over there, which is still there. We will soon introduce citizen services in India. Driver’s licence, passports, national IDs, anything that you would go to again.

What about your plan to list on the exchanges?

We were planning to list in 2019. Then Covid came. So, our listing plans didn’t work out. We were even looking at listing very early this year, but again, because of the crisis in the Gulf region, we are just holding on. We are very agnostic in terms of whether we list or we will look at a strategic partnership with somebody. But I think we always keep these things open.

You have been a Parsi priest. How does this influence decision-making in a corporate setting?

Being born into a middle-class Parsi priestly family in Dadar, Mumbai, had a profound influence on my outlook on life. At the heart of Zoroastrian philosophy is a simple but powerful principle: good thoughts, good words and good deeds.

My years as a priest taught me that success should never be measured purely by outcomes. Equally important is how those outcomes are achieved, and that means putting people first and treating them with fairness, dignity and respect. When situations become challenging, my instinct is to slow down, reflect and stay grounded.

I believe in having what I call ‘good paranoia’ – not being overly paranoid but maintaining a healthy awareness of what could change around us. While I no longer actively perform priestly duties, spirituality remains an important part of my daily life.

My priestly background gave me an ethical compass, a sense of service, and the belief that long-term success comes from doing the right thing, treating people well and staying true to your values. That philosophy also shapes how I think about leadership and organisational growth.