Do a Mission Impossible - With Thrillophilia!
Thrillophilia is a one spot destination of all adventure and eco tours in India. If you are a nature or adventure enthusiast and want to explore India then becoming a Thrillophile wouldn’t be a very bad idea. We at Yourstory, caught up with Abhishek Daga, the co-founder of Thrillophilia, and got to know a bit about what they do and how they do it.
What they offer
Thrillophilia has adventure trips on offer that include rappelling, boulder climbing, hiking and camping. “All the major expeditions are done through our partners, who are best in the business from decades. Most of the time what we really do is connect the right customer with the right service provider and local trusted partners when it comes to expeditions,” says Abhishek. Although it seems easy it could be really tough ordeal say, in getting a guide to Periyar or a lady guide to Zanskar.
The packages mostly require some level of customization. “People normally take breaks and want to have best experience possible during their holiday time so we suggest them on lot of things, plan the entire tour for them and also guide them on safety measures, things to carry etc,” he adds.
Thrillophilia has also made inroads into the corporate outing industry. “From organization problem solving, outbound learning to leadership and talent development, people just love our programs because all these programs have been very well thought out and executed and also customized according to the requirements,” exclaims the co-founder.
How they started off
The team initially started with the idea of building an adventure and activity portal where each and every possible activity trip of India would be listed and become a one stop destination for adventure travel. Even though there was measured success, the company decided to focus more on particular regions and then scale up.
“It’s been a rollercoaster ride. We celebrated every success, every moment of joy and pushed ourselves harder during tough days. Yes there were lots of tough days, days when we did not do any sales for 45 days, days when the website was under malware attack and then blacklisted by Google, month on month negative cash flows, but persistence was the key. Like every start-up there were problems faced with regard to getting good deals from vendors.”
“When we started a lot of service providers out rightly rejected us based on our size. We came out stronger and then came the plan of having corporate tours, a completely managed experience where we had built our own outdoor and training team and started doing activity and experiential learning programs, These services turned the table for us and gave the thrust we needed, and we now have served more than 14000 people and counting.” adds Abhishek.
Current traction and future trends
Thrillophilia presently attracts traction of about 30 customers a day. “The challenge is to serve every customer of ours who asks for an activity trip in India. We ensure that we never serve a half cooked product or do things which we are not capable of delivering or are not confident about,” Abhishek informs.
With a pretty massive facebook fan following of 27000, online is their medium of marketing. Besides the 10k fans on twitter, Thrillophilia has thousands of newsletter subscribers, and this is a testimony to how powerful a tool social media has become in laying out a marketing strategy.
A few years down the line, the company seeks to more visibility in the market, and hopes that even for a weekend trekking trip, they’d be the place to go to.
As a final word, Abhishek adds, “One thing which is most important to succeed as a startup is to have great people around. A great mentor, a great family to support and a great team to deliver. We are blessed with all of them. Thrillophilia is a team of extremely passionate people who love what they do and that is the reason we are able to deliver services at this level. We call ourselves Thrillophiles and Thrillophilia truly holds for its name ‘Love for Thrill’.”
To uncover more thrills and spills, visit their site here.
