Travel startup Thrillophilia moves towards a marketplace model; serves 2200 customers/month

Thrillophilia is a 3 year old travel startup founded by Chitra Gurnani and Abhishek Daga. The company started out with their passion for travel and their belief in India as a good market for adventure tours. The company has been in the space for a few years and has now added activities and things to do in their portfolio. Thrillophilia is now a marketplace for tours, activities and to-do things with the site having undergone a major revamp as well.

Thrillophilia raised a small round of angel investment from investors in the US in 2011 and has now grown to a team of 30 people. The portal is primarily for travelers who want to get the feel of the local culture and activities. For e.g., sea kayaking expeditions in Goa, a palatial dinner with royal family in Rajasthan, etc. Many of the travel sites (Tushky, Poshvine, etc) have pivoted in a way to short activities and experiences as well.

Thrillophilia has a 4 people outdoor department (which is growing) whose job is to travel and curate the local experiences. They travel, experience, do quality checks and once they approve, a vendor login is created for the vendor to uplaod his inventory and the web managers help the vendor to get his trips online.

Thrillophilia is serving close to 2200 customers a month at this stage, with a healthy mix of solo travelers, group bookings (sometimes as big as 150) including corporate bookings. Most of these are day trips or weekend breaks and around 12% of the business also comes from the international customers. “We do not say that we are solving everything with this launch but it's a big step towards the organization of activity travel market and where we want to head is real time on spot booking on travel day,” concludes Abhishek.

Website: Thrillophilia