25 years and counting: VFS Global’s Zubin Karkaria on secured mobility built on trust
Founder and CEO Zubin Karkaria on VFS Global’s journey, the UAE as a global hub and the future of mobility
21 August, 2026
TT
16
In 2001, a pilot project with the US Consulate in Mumbai saw three small visa centres being set up in western India. Twenty-five years on, that experiment has become VFS Global: a partner to 71 governments, operating over 4,200 application centres across 169 countries, with 17,500-plus staff and more than 557 million transactions processed.
Along the way, it created a new industry, moved millions of people across borders more securely, and made Dubai its home, where it now runs the largest visa application centre on the planet. Its founder and chief executive officer, Zubin Karkaria, built it from a humble start in a Mumbai travel firm to the global conglomerate it is today.
Sitting down with Gulf Business at the company’s Dubai head office, Karkaria is reflective about the milestone but focused on what comes next: a business expanding from visas into identity, education, medical and citizen services, all of it anchored, he insists, in trust.
In 2001, you created a category that didn’t exist before. What problem did you see that others had overlooked, and did you ever imagine it could grow into a global business?
It all started with identifying a genuine need and developing a solution which adds value to society, with clarity of purpose. In the 1990s, India’s economic reforms had triggered a sharp rise in demand for outbound travel and therefore for visas. At the time, applications could only be submitted at embassies and consulates, and applicants often had to journey long distances to major cities with restricted submission times.
In a country as vast as India, there was a clear opportunity to make the process simpler, more accessible and, above all, able to cope with the surge in demand. Governments and embassies wanted the same thing. That’s when I proposed a model where we could manage the entire administrative and non-judgmental part of the visa process while enabling governments to focus solely on decision-making. In 2001, we launched a pilot with the US Consulate in Mumbai, and that became the beginning of VFS Global, with three centres in western India.
Today, we are present in 169 countries, a trusted partner to 71 client governments, operating over 4,200 application centres with 17,500-plus employees. Since its inception, we have processed over 557 million transactions. Our exclusive partnership with Emirates Airline made the UAE one of our very first client governments.
VFS Global turns 25 this year. In the early days, what were the key moments that convinced you that you were building something with real potential?
Since day one, the mission has remained clear: to make secure cross-border mobility simple and convenient through innovative, reliable technology. In the early days, very positive feedback from applicants and government agencies reinforced the value of what we were doing. What gave me conviction was the belief that this model created value for everyone: travellers, through a smoother experience, and governments, by letting them focus fully on decision-making. Looking back, a small pilot didn’t just reduce queues; we enhanced how people experienced global mobility. We proved that trust, dignity and modern public service can go hand in hand.
The next major milestone was winning the first global contract for UK visas in 2007. We took on the UK Home Office mandate covering 33 countries with integrated biometrics and began UK–Australia joint visa application centres across 11 countries. That catapulted us into a truly global operation, and the mandate has since grown to span 142 countries. From those beginnings, it has been an extraordinary trust-building journey. We are also far more diversified than a decade ago, with a portfolio spanning visas, passports, identity, education, tourism and citizen services.
Headquartered in Zurich and Dubai and rooted in Swiss heritage, VFS Global is today majority-owned through investment funds managed by Blackstone, alongside Temasek, Kuoni and Hugentobler Foundation, and Dubai Holding.
VFS Global is headquartered in Dubai, home to your largest Visa Application Centre. What makes the UAE the right base?
My connection with the UAE goes back almost 30 years, to my time with the Kuoni Group, the first Indian tour operator to recognise the potential of Dubai as a tourism destination, with Emirates as a key partner. That foundation deepened in 2002 with the Dubai Visa Processing Centre, the first airline-specific visa platform of its kind, which has since processed over 3.7 million UAE visa applications and today runs 27 centres across 15 countries.
When we moved our global head office to Dubai in 2013, it was in recognition of the fact that the city was fast emerging as a global hub for business, technology and innovation. In synchronisation with the ‘We the UAE 2031’ vision, we have designed our long-term growth corridors to advance national talent competitiveness, and now employ more than 850 staff in the country. We have also replicated our model for UAE government entities.
In September 2024, we secured a landmark contract with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to expand attestation services — which have expanded to 43 countries as of March 2026, from a three-country pilot in 2023. In 2025, Dubai became home to the world’s largest Visa Application Centre, at Wafi Mall.
At nearly 150,000 square feet, it is designed to handle up to 10,000 applications a day and serves over 40 governments. It also pays tribute to Emirati culture, with commissioned artwork by Emirati women artists and a café owned and operated by six Emirati women entrepreneurs. By turning the centre into a platform for local art and community engagement, we show respect for the UAE’s culture while offering a richer experience
to applicants.
AI and biometrics are reshaping how borders operate. How close are we to a seamless, near-borderless visa experience?
One of the most exciting developments in our journey has been our AI-led transformation, which made us the first in our industry to integrate AI across visa, consular and identity services. VFS Global has evolved into a responsible-AI-led organisation where AI is an article of faith, embedded with strong guardrails, human oversight and government-grade security.
We have a team of 22 data scientists building the secure infrastructure behind it. Globally, technology is transforming how governments manage mobility, through digital visa programmes, AI-enabled platforms and advanced biometrics. But in my view, the future of mobility will continue to be shaped by striking the balance between seamlessness and security.
More of the journey will move online, but supervised biometric enrolment in controlled environments will remain important for the foreseeable future, as governments prioritise border integrity and identity assurance.
We support both models: eight active eVisa programmes and custom digital solutions for 15 client governments, alongside secure biometric enrolment where high identity assurance is required.
How do you address concerns around compliance, data privacy, security and government trust?
The very first thing we did at the start of our AI journey was to put the right guardrails in place, partnering with the Responsible AI Institute, because we work in a very sensitive environment. We now invest in future technologies, and protecting applicant data is central to how we design them.
A prime example is our generative-AI chatbot for UK visa customers across 142 countries, built by teams in Dubai, Mumbai and Berlin. It is trained only on publicly available data and hosted entirely on our secure infrastructure, using data masking and personally identifiable information (PII) detection so no sensitive data is ever stored or shared externally.
In 2025, we became the first in our sector to earn the ‘Dubai AI Seal’ as a ‘Trusted AI Enterprise’, with operations adhering to standards including ISO 27001:2022, UK Cyber Essentials Plus and Germany’s IT Grundschutz.
You’ve made a strategic push into global talent and education. How do these fit your broader plans?
With VFS Global Academy, we are building the next generation of global talent with the belief that creating opportunities is as important as enabling mobility. Launched in 2022, it prepares young people for sectors such as travel, tourism, hospitality, logistics and international business. Since inception, we have trained more than 2,800 students, with 100 per cent internships and a 95 per cent placement rate, many of them the first in their families to access international careers. We expect up to 20 centres by the end of 2026 and aim to train 10,000 young people by 2030.
In partnership with the Government of India, the academy has also trained 35,000-plus candidates through the Pre-Departure Orientation Training programme.
VFS Education Services simplifies cross-border admissions for students and universities. Our breakthrough partnership with Austria’s leading public technical universities creates a merit-based pathway for engineering graduates into world-class master’s programmes, using blockchain-based authentication to protect academic credibility. The goal is to bridge global talent shortages and transform student mobility into
a seamless, dignified experience.
The pandemic was an unprecedented test for the travel industry. What was the most difficult decision you had to take during that time?
The pandemic was structurally the most disruptive event in the history of global mobility, forcing the temporary closure of roughly 3,300 visa application centres across 150 countries.
We took swift, decisive action, implementing sweeping cost-control measures while restructuring to become a more resilient organisation. Balancing immediate crisis management with keeping the organisation ready for recovery was the toughest leadership mandate of my career. We also used the disruption to transform the business through digitalisation, launching pre-travel testing solutions, expanding Visa At Your Doorstep and pivoting toward passport services.
Crucially, we prioritised our workforce, engaging over 6,000 employees in eLearning to keep our culture and entrepreneurial spirit intact.
How is VFS Global contributing to Emiratisation and to women’s leadership in the region?
Our commitment to Emiratisation drives long-term sustainability, aligned with the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation and the ‘We the UAE 2031’ vision. We have a roadmap to scale our national workforce to 76 by 2031; our Emirati headcount has already grown from six in 2022 to 29 by June 2026. Through our Empowerment and Inclusion department, we upskill local colleagues across 24 corporate domains including AI and cybersecurity, and partner with the Higher Colleges of Technology on apprenticeships.
Women are actively shaping our regional executive footprint, including leading critical operational rollouts for the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
How important is diversity to operating at scale?
Diversity is one of our greatest strengths. Operating across 169 countries with a workforce representing 169 nationalities, and a global women-to-men ratio of 60:40 as of June this year, our daily reality demands cultural and linguistic adaptation with consistent global standards. It is why we are recognised as a Great Place to Work in several markets. That diversity gives us an unparalleled repository of local knowledge and hyper-local perspective, which lets us understand the distinct needs of both applicants and client governments, even in the world’s most complex markets.
What do client governments look for and how have you earned their trust?
When awarding contracts through competitive tenders, governments evaluate providers over 12 to 18 months against historical experience, network reach, financial strength, compliance, security infrastructure and price. These are security-critical operations involving national border integrity and highly sensitive personal data, so the bar is high. We believe in the power of trusted public-private partnerships, and have built our track record by delivering reliability, service quality and security for 25 years. We have a 100 per cent win rate on existing client-government renewals and 99.4 per cent on new contracts.
We are a trusted partner to 71 governments, managing secure biometric facilities for virtually all Schengen states and the Migration Five alliance: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US. Today we hold exclusive contracts with 41 of our client governments, accounting for roughly 60 per cent of our total global application volume.
One thing we must constantly clarify: VFS Global has absolutely no influence over visa decisions, timelines or appointment capacities, which remain the sole prerogative of individual embassies.
Where do you see the next phase of growth?
Our ambition is to be a full-spectrum, technology-led public-service partner. Visas will always remain our core anchor, but our role is expanding into adjacent government-to-citizen services: identity management, verification and attestation, passports, education and medical services. This lets governments modernise faster and avoid fragmented systems or duplicated investment.
A major driver is our majority acquisition of CiX Citizen Experience in Brazil, which operates over 250 citizen service centres delivering more than 200 types of service, from IDs and passports to driving licences and social assistance — an estimated $4bn market opportunity.
Combining CiX’s platforms with our footprint across 169 countries, we are uniquely positioned to scale next-generation public services worldwide. Ultimately, we are building a global backbone that supports the entire cross-border and citizen journey, with the highest standards of dignity, security and scale.
