Sightseeing savoir-faire

You can see it's a case of the perfect fit. From the many times she played defacto city-guide to foreign callers of her banking clients "" IIM graduate, banking consultant and general nosey-parker "" Deepa Krishnan discovered her yen for playing host(ess). "India suffers a lack of insightful, personalised tour operators."

She now operates a luxury city-tour service "" "I'm a tour guide, not a travel agent," she clarifies. The audience for Krishnan comes easy with her business network "" the chairman of Temasek Holdings and the board of directors of Fidelity and their ilk, usually squeezing in a day of taking in the sights between biz rounds.

Her first initiative "" Filter Coffee Tours, was started in Chennai two years ago. When she moved to home-base Mumbai, she began a second chapter called Mumbai Magic Tours. On offer is your money's worth of a guide, concierge and personal shopper.

The options read like an a-la-carte menu but the faint-of-heart can stick with a ready-made itinerary. "It's very fluid," says Krishnan. "Sometimes we get very specific requests, like foreign chefs who want a street food tour, so we take them to Chowpatty for bhelpuri or Bade Miyan for kabab rolls, and send them back with insights and recipes."

Her props are inventive "" illustrated handouts, a show-and-tell kit that gives you quirky insights into provincial culture. For Krishnan, its the little things that count. That's where the nosey-parker quality helps so much.

She's just located and purchased traditional Dhobiya songs, sung by Mumbai's washer community. She's compiling a CD that can be played in the car as visitors are taken to witness the cleansing action at Mumbai's remarkable Dhobi Ghat.

The tariffs, unmistakably, are dear "" Rs 8,000 for a half-day tour for a single person. Probably why it's predominantly foreigners she delights with her energy and savvy. "We do make sure it's value for money, whether it's the car we ride in, the packed food from the Oberoi, or the concierge service we offer for theatre tickets and dinner bookings," she explains.

Krishnan is plotting a specialised cricket tour, and then there's the idea about exposing tourists to the underbelly of Mumbai "" dance bars, police, crime... She's working on a theatre production, something that can become a permanent fixture in her offering.

Later this month, she lets slip, she's playing guide to an unnamed Formula One celebrity driver. "I underestimated the power of the Internet," she says referring to her newly-launched website.

Her blog helps too "" a regular posting of colourful snippets about the city that she hopes will whet appetite with its contemplations on the vada pav or the pigeons of Mumbai. "I try and find legends everywhere," she chats on.