Travel in India has undergone a fundamental shift.

For Gen Z and millennials, travel is no longer an occasional indulgence. It is a recurring discretionary investment, driven by social discovery, shared experiences, and a desire to step away from increasingly screen-led lives. This shift is durable and observable across domestic and outbound travel behaviour.

Yet the industry remains misaligned with this consumer.

Most incumbents continue to operate as logistics providers: optimised for throughput, rigid itineraries, and operational efficiency rather than the quality of experience. At the other extreme, self-planned travel places the burden and complexity of planning, safety and execution entirely on the consumer. The space between these two models is where experiential, community-led travel has emerged globally as a scalable category.

WanderOn is building this category in India.

Experiential Group Travel: A Proven Global Playbook

Internationally, experiential and group-led travel has demonstrated both scale and durability.

Intrepid Travel: Scaling Purpose-Led Experiential Tourism

Founded in 1989 and headquartered in Melbourne, Intrepid Travel is the world’s largest travel B Corp and a global leader in experiential, small-group travel. The company operates across 100+ countries.

After being majority-owned by TUI from 2007 to 2015, the founders repurchased the business to realign it with their “growth with purpose” philosophy. Since then, Intrepid has embedded sustainability into its core strategy, achieved B Corp certification, and built a vertically integrated model with more than 30 wholly owned Destination Management Companies. As of 2024, Intrepid has scaled to AUD 600 million+ in revenue. Through the Intrepid Foundation, the company disburses millions to global partners, reinforcing its position as a global leader in regenerative, community-based tourism.

 G Adventures: Scaling Experiential Travel with Local Impact

Founded in 1990 and headquartered in Toronto, G Adventures is built around a clear commitment to experiential, community-led travel, with tourism spending intentionally retained within local economies. The company reports an average Ripple Score of 93% across its tours, meaning that most of the trip-related spending remains within host communities. Each itinerary transparently displays its Ripple Score, allowing travellers to make informed choices based on local economic impact.

Operating across 100+ countries with more than 1,000 itineraries, G Adventures has scaled to approximately USD 750 million in annual revenue, demonstrating that an experience-first, values-driven travel brand can achieve global scale while maintaining strong community alignment.

Contiki: Scaling Social Travel for the 18–35 Cohort

Founded in 1962 as a youth-focused group travel brand, Contiki pioneered social, community-driven travel for the 18–35 age cohort. Following its acquisition by The Travel Corporation, Contiki scaled globally across 75+ countries while retaining a clear youth-first positioning.

Its longevity is driven by a disciplined ability to evolve with generational shifts. Through its annual Voice of a Generation survey, Contiki systematically tracks changing attitudes among young travellers and adapts its offerings in response. One outcome has been the rise of “Decision Detox” travel, with end-to-end logistics fully managed to reduce planning fatigue while preserving time for personal exploration. The brand has also repositioned from nightlife-led trips toward “social travel,” reflecting rising preferences for wellness and sustainability. Under its MAKE TRAVEL MATTER® framework, Contiki embeds responsible tourism practices into itineraries, including support for local businesses, community projects, and lower-impact experiences. These adaptations have helped Contiki remain culturally relevant to successive generations of young travellers.

Across these businesses, the pattern is consistent:

• Ability to manage on-ground experience is a core defensibility
• Experiential travel scales when execution is backed by financial discipline
• Repeat behaviour compounds over time

India is just getting started on its travel journey. Indians are set to be the No.1 travellers in the world making this one of the most compelling consumer opportunities of our time.

The Indian Opportunity

India’s packaged holidays market is estimated at ~USD 11 billion, yet remains fragmented and skewed toward older, value-conscious travellers. At the same time, Gen Z and millennials already account for a disproportionate share of travel growth, particularly for outbound, adventure, and experience-led trips.

This cohort travels more frequently, discovers destinations socially, and increasingly prefers group travel not for price efficiency, but for safety, confidence, and shared experiences. Despite this, India has lacked a scaled, brand-led operator built specifically for this consumer.

WanderOn addresses this gap with a sharp focus on exactly this underserved consumer.

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Why WanderOn

WanderOn operates between templatised, mass tourism and self-planned travel.

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Its model removes friction and safety concerns while preserving flexibility and personalisation. Trips are led by trained captains, designed around experience density rather than sightseeing volume, and structured to convert groups of strangers into cohesive travel communities.

Since inception, WanderOn has:

• expanded to 40+ domestic and international destinations‍
• served ~24,000 travellers annually‍
• built 83+NPS, 4.9/5 platform ratings, and ~50% repeat and referral bookings‍
• scaled to INR 1 billion + in revenue while remaining fully bootstrapped, operating with a negative working capital cycle and strong capital efficiency.

‍Operating without external capital has imposed discipline from day one: strong unit economics, measured destination expansion, and a focus on repeat demand rather than paid growth. The business has scaled by earning trust and cultural relevance, not by buying demand through marketing.

Built with Heart. Scaled with Rigour.

WanderOn was not built from a business plan. It grew out of a genuine love for travel. Govind Gaur has been organising trips since college and has travelled solo across 40+ countries. What started as a personal passion became a company when he began structuring trips for others. His co-founders, Madhusudan Jaju, Chirag Jain, and Ravi Khokher, are long-time friends from NIT Kurukshetra, bringing complementary strengths across operations, product, and technology.

But passion alone does not scale. WanderOn pairs that founding energy with real operating discipline: hundreds of trained trip captains, a structured multi-month training process, and low captain churn in a people-intensive category. The result is a team that cares deeply about the experience and delivers it consistently.

This combination of founder-market fit, team continuity, and execution discipline enables WanderOn to scale without compromising experience quality.

Economics and Compounding Advantage

Mature domestic destinations operate at 25-30% gross margins, materially higher than traditional DMC-led operators. The business is asset-light, benefits from negative working capital, and typically brings new destinations to maturity within two to three years.

Growth is powered by a reinforcing loop:

• high-quality execution drives repeat behaviour
• repeat travellers generate referrals and content
• organic demand reduces long-term acquisition costs
• stronger economics fund further expansion

This compounding dynamic mirrors what we have seen globally in scaled experiential travel platforms.

A Deliberate Anti-AI Investment

Travel is increasingly discussed as a category ripe for AI-driven disruption, from automated itinerary planning to algorithmic personalisation.

We take a more deliberate view.

While AI is valuable in reducing friction across lead handling, pricing, and operations, the core value of experiential travel remains human. People travel to disconnect, not to engage with more screens. What endures are shared moments, leadership on the ground, and the quality of social experience — not algorithmic optimisation.

WanderOn uses technology where it improves reliability and efficiency, but the experience itself remains captain-led and community-driven. In a world becoming more automated and individualised, shared offline experiences increase in value.

In that sense, WanderOn is not an AI-led travel platform. It is an anti-AI bet, supported by technology, but grounded in human execution.

This fundraise marks the transition from execution proof to category creation.
WanderOn will scale its international footprint, deepen its experience stack, and continue investing in the operating backbone required to deliver safe, consistent, high-quality travel - without sacrificing the on-ground experience that drives trust and repeat behaviour.

We are backing WanderOn to build a category-defining experiential travel platform for the Indian traveler: one built to last in a world where IRL experiences truly matter.