Asian Travel Planning Platform Ithaka To Expand To Europe

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The startup, currently active in Bali & Thailand, is now preparing to expand to more parts of Asia and Europe. We spoke to CEO Ameya Sahasrabudhe about the future of the travel industry & opportunities in Europe.

How would you describe Ithaka in a few words?

An immersive travel app where you can chat with an expert and plan your perfect holiday.

Asian Travel Planning Platform Ithaka To Expand To Europe

Ameya Sahasrabudhe, CEO Ithaka

What inspired you to create the startup? How did it all start?

I graduated from India’s top tech university, got a high paying job but was frustrated with the dullness of work. I read this poem called Ithaka, quit my job within 15 min and later went backpacking through South East Asia.

We first launched as an activity/experience booking marketplace for Thailand. In the course of interacting with travelers, we learned that while booking is a big unsolved problem, the bigger problem is travel planning. Once this was clear, we pivoted to a chat-based travel advice model and saw it work.

Ithaka is active in Bali and Thailand – how does the tourism industry differ in these countries compared to Europe?

In simple terms, Europe is organized and expensive, while South East Asia is disorganized and cheap.
From a business point of view,

  1. Vendors in Thailand and Bali have primitive systems and far lesser internet exposure. This makes it hard to strike scalable vendors. Europe is quite advanced in this regard.
  2. South East Asia is buzzing with a million tours, experiences and activities to chose from – many of which are low quality. There is a lot of untapped potentials currently recommending and selling these. Europe has fewer, high-quality experiences.

Your team has various backgrounds – from designers to engineers. In what ways do you think their backgrounds shape the travel experiences of your clients?

This is an excellent question. Our team is very diverse. We have accountants, MBAs, marketers, recruiters, professional gamers and Air Force aspirants in our chat team alone! What unites all of us under one umbrella is – we love to travel.

My co-founder Rahul and I wanted to hire the kind of people we don’t usually have in our circles, and it has helped build a lot of character in our team. For example, if you look at our travel planning experience, an accounting background is great for naturally optimising travel costs for our customers, while a professional gaming background brings insights on how to gamify the process and keep the users engaged and a sales background helps us close the sale in a frictionless manner.

You’re a travel planning platform – what can you tell us about the process and how do you think travel experiences will change over the next years?

Our process is immersive – first, users tell us a bit about them and then discover the destination virtually through our app. Then, they dig a bit deeper and narrow down places and experiences that excite them. Finally, they chat with their personal trip designer who helps put it all together in an optimal plan and book the trip.

The travel industry is a hard-fought business. What makes Ithaka stand out of the crowd? What is the key differentiator?

You are right, the travel industry is cluttered with brands constantly fighting for attention from the same audience. It’s tough.

The key reason Ithaka stands out is that we are 100% focused on solving travel planning, and we’ve built a product that responds to each individual user’s needs and aspirations. In fact, we’re so focused that we’ve stuck to 2 countries for almost 2 years to perfect our planning experience.

Apart from this:

  1. We put the user in the center of attention. This keeps the user as involved in the planning as us and results in highly personalized trips.
  2. We put experience above everything else. This is evident in our play store reviews too 😉
  3. We are always there for our users. Whether they’re having trouble finding a good forex deal or missed their flight and need to redo the plan. We are just one text away.
  4. We are not customer servicey. Not even a little bit. Our trip designers chat with travelers like they would with a friend, and it shows in the trust that they put in us.

Are you using your services internally? How does that affect the viewpoints of the team?

Yes. Since we are limited to 2 destinations this hasn’t happened quite a lot, but whenever it does, we gain a whole lot of insights on how our users perceive us and our advice.

What is the most memorable moment throughout the history of Ithaka?

Finding our CTO. For a long time, my co-founder and I were without a techie. We’d built the initial version of our app with the help from a friend but couldn’t add any new features. We didn’t want to hire someone off the job market because the first techie sets the tech culture and it’s very hard finding someone truly good + passionate at their job.

We were working in a co-working space then, and other founders were friends or acquaintances. One of these startups shut down, and we pounced. Mithilesh was the tech lead of this startup, and we found the perfect techie in every possible way. He coded brilliantly, was rock solid with his understanding of tech and most importantly fully bought into our vision. My co-founder Rahul and I were so happy, we celebrated a win after a long time!

That turned out to be our pivotal moment because we started churning out features within weeks and never looked back. In fact, the testimony to Mithilesh’s commitment to Ithaka is this: We were bootstrapped when we hired him, and ran out of cash in a couple of months because investor talks were getting delayed. He came to me voluntarily, and not just offered to take a pay cut, but pitch in his own money to keep us afloat, with no expectations in return. He’s our CTO now, leading a team of 8 techies and continues to inspire us.

What are the next steps for Ithaka in terms of expansion?

We’ve focused on South East Asia for a while now and made great progress in solving the travel planning problem. It is now time to take our technology and experience globally.

Once we’re through with our current fundraising, we’ll expand to more destinations in South East Asia and go after Europe. Europe is the largest travel market in the world, and EU travelers have always been very appreciative of our service. It’s time we bring the Ithaka experience to Europe!

What’s one piece of advice you can give to fellow founders for their startup?

Hire the right people, even if it takes time to find the right person. We’ve made many hiring mistakes, in almost every role at Ithaka. Our learning has been that if you manage to find someone who is truly a good fit for the role – passionate, competent, fearless, and stable – you will not only sleep better knowing your company is in good hands, but you’ll naturally start attracting more of the same kind.

A corollary to the above advice is: Do not hire someone just because they’re your friends or family. Never. It may work out in the short run, but will eventually bite you real bad and the damage could get out of hand.

 

 

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