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Thrillophilia is making experiential travel mainstream

Travel by no means is a small industry for Indians. The country is brought up on the lure of the annual pilgrimage to a new destination each summer when the schools close for vacations. Be it visiting family and friends in new towns or high end travel to other countries, we are willing to spend money for it. A survey commissioned on behalf of Trip Advisor goes on to say that Indians will spend more on vacations this year and within the next 20 years the number of Indians flying abroad would peak six times the current figure.

But how does it connect with the three year old Bangalore based Thrillophilia and its co-founder Abhishek Daga? Avinash Raghava and I had a freewheeling chat with Thrillophilia to find out about them. Read on the excerpts:

What is Thrillophilia? 

Thrillophilia is a three year startup in the adventure travel space. They focus on solving the pain point of finding and experiencing unique activities and things to do in India. Enabling adventure seekers to move beyond the hotel-as-a-destination to experience what the region has to offer by focusing on itineraries as exciting as kayaking in Goa to walking tours in old city of Mysore.

How did it all start?

Travel had always been a passion for Abhishek and his co-founder Chitra. Who would then seek to travel and explore new destinations in and around Karnataka owing to their Bangalore jobs. But the problem they faced while planning for getaways was beyond finding the right destinations extending to seeking right vendor.

What began as a simple blog in 2009, Thrillophilia concentrated on providing content on ‘what to do’ based on their own experience and recommendations. With enough content and traction on the blog they slowly evolved Thrillophilia by 2010 as a side project with a small team consisting of sales leads. The initial focus and traction came from corporates and bigger brands who were now routinely seeking offbeat experiences for their team building efforts. Thrillophilia seemed to fit in perfectly with its offering.

Enter 2011 Abhishek mentions about breaking even, the entire efforts up until this point had been self funded. With a cash positive nature of their business they also raised angel funding from an NRI investor to help with the growth.

Where is Thrillophilia right now?

Abhishek claims 200% year on year for their startup with 400 tours and 500 experiences live right now with another 1000+ coming up in the next few months. Even though corporates still dominate that number is fast decreasing as the offering and the focus shifts from a B2B to a B2C product. For Indians the most popular destinations tend to be in Goa and Karnataka whereas for the international travelers Rajasthan and Kerala catch their fancy.

Thrillophilia recently launched a market place to get vendors under an umbrella banner and increase the product offering, a move which could be beneficial for the repeat customers on the platform. With nearly 600 vendors onboard Thrillophilia is aiming to meet the milestone of 30,000 travelers and 3500 experiences in the current year. Ground based travel is what dominates the offerings, but water based experiences still matter at 12% with airborne activities coming at 3% on Thrillophilia.  


Next on target?

With a dedicated scout team to help match and vet the outdoor offerings, Thrillophilia will spend the coming time to strengthen its marketplace offerings with the vendors many of whom are still standalone operators relying on voice/sms for their business. The other efforts will go towards online campaigns over social media and repeat customers.

Competition in the space

To say Thrillophilia is the sole startup building a product in the travel space would be wrong. The experiential travel space is heating up with competition coming from Delhi based Travel Triangle and TLabs backed iExperience with GSF-500 Startups backed Tushky all adding their healthy mix of spin to the sector.

Hope you give Thrillophilia a spin for your next adventure holiday. I for one am definitely pinging Abhishek for recommendations for my kayaking holiday!

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#ReversePitch “The day VCs pitch the Startups”

Depending upon who do you ask the question, the answer to “Indian Startup ecosystem has a shortage of good quality?” would oscillate between kick-ass investors and great customers. While the presence of both is crucial to validate the success of the startup, founders always seem to be cut-off from both of kick-ass investors. With India poised towards climbing up the entrepreneurial ladders, no wonder we would see more first generation product startups coming out of unheard Indian towns and cities.

With this in mind, the recent edition of #ReversePitch took place at 91SpringBoard. The premise is simple, at any conventional networking/demo event the startups are the ones pitching their ideas and its potential to a room full of investors. But by turning the tables in favor of the startups the idea of reverse pitch was born. Investors now make their pitches to a room full of potential startups as to why they are the best bet.

For those of you wondering whether this was another bout of “networking” and “gyaan” session by investors making tall claims for their funds haven’t seen Mukund Mohan in action. Seeing that the founders were taking time to warm up that too in a room full of people having the exact same question in mind. Mukund brought everybody at ease and what followed were interesting rounds of presentation by VCs and subsequent Q&A by the audience.


The questions were spread across the entire spectrum from the usual one on how to raise their seed fund to a startup specific. What tricked both the founders and the VCs were the most simplest of questions which required the greatest insights. Not many might have wondered about “How do VCs actually decide their investment amount?” or our personal favorite “Who gives money to the VCs?” The latter had the entire crowd glued should they find their secret!


With the wheel set in motion the post event discussion was full of its own share of fun. Where else can you find a startup sharing their experiences on raising their first round with a former-founder-turned-VCs chipping in to reminisce about his own life.


This was not the first time #ReversePitch took place in India and this will definitely not be the last time it takes place in Delhi. Nothing is more better than learning from shared experiences. For those of who missed the event can search for the official hashtag #ReversePitch on twitter and relive the moments and maybe even catch the VCs no hold barred in the after party!


A handy list of the VCs who presented at #ReversePitch in no particular order of their likeliness to fund your venture:

 


The pitch sessions was followed by networking with the investors and the community had an amazing time. Thanks to Subhendu(ReversePitch), Mukund, Mukul(Saif Partners), Apurv & for the 91Springboard team for putting together an amazing show. Stay tuned for some more excitement in the next few months!