Chitra Gurnani Daga , CEO of Thrillophilia Adventure Tours
The passion for travel with a firm belief that India as a destination has abundant opportunities when it comes to adventure travel and local experiences which sown the seed of Thrillophilia in Chitra Gurnani Daga and she co-founded Thrillophilia Adventure Tours Pvt Ltd. with her husband Abhishek Daga in 2009.
Over the years, Thrillophilia has evolved from being an online service provider to being a marketplace connecting vendor partners and customers with more than 10,000+ activities, tours and excursions. Our business model is similar to that of any marketplace where any transaction happening results in vendor partners getting business and we are getting a certain percentage for helping them acquire customers.
Chitra a MBA graduate served at SAP labs is a woman who loves to take risks and very passionate about traveling, exploring and seeking adventure.Both she and her husband have a passion for adventure and on one such adventure break when they realized a business opportunity with unprecedented potential and jumped into it.
Chitra said “We, at Thrillophilia curate unique, genuinely local and high quality travel experiences. Our customers love how we add thrill to their regular holidays and make them truly memorable. Our suppliers love how we simplify business operations and sales for them and let them focus on the core of their outdoor business.USP of Thrillophilia is the understanding and the learning developed over the years which have helped us tremendously in not only getting to know our customers but also to develop phenomenal outdoor products while at the same time delivering exceptional customer service”.
She added that the reason why Thrillophilia is doing well is mainly due to the fact that it is not like a me-too online activities platform or a rip off of some business model operating in some part of this world. We ourselves encountered a problem while wanting to book an adventure based activity and that’s when this idea came. So, essentially, in a largely disorganized market, full of chaos, wrong commitments and unpleasant experiences, this came as an opportunity and more importantly, we are solving a real world problem.
Thrillophilia has started, when other Traditional and many prominent Travel companies are struggling to survive and many OTA’s have holiday travel as one of the offerings amongst a plethora of categories and if we further deep dive into it, then we will come across adventure travel which will constituent a very small part of their overall business, hence the low focus.
Travel as a sector has undergone a 360 degrees’ evolution. Gone are the days when you would be visiting a palace in Amber (in Jaipur) and a guide would be vomiting all that he parroted about the history of this monument. I mean, why would I waste my time listening to something that I can google and read on Wikipedia? Today’s travel is all about storytelling. I fondly remember all the stories that my grandmother told me not because they were extra ordinary stories (some were) but because of the manner in which they were told. Travelers today are looking for stories associated with places all the more because they kind of relate to them. These stories could be about the place, the food, the culture, the people and so on.
In today’s world where there is practically no time even to meet your relatives (though you live in the same town!), social media is the one platform where one can meet all his friends and family virtually and share his stories, pictures, statuses etc… and that’s when we realized that this is the medium through which we need to create and communicate stories of our travelers. Another reason why platforms like Fb, Instagram have become so popular is that all the travellers are looking for that at least one instagrammable picture from the holiday to brag about and what better place than the social networks to post the same! As an experienced traveler and inspiring women entrepreneur Chitra have a word of warning to upcoming entreprenuers, My sincere advice to them would be to do something only with their 200% heart and soul. Don’t get into travel because you see Thrillophilia as a success or you see me as an inspiration. Do it because you want to do it. Do it because this is your passion. And once you get into it, give it your best shot and keep giving it each day
