14th February 2020: Startups go through a phase of tough transformation and it is a journey that cannot be successful without support and trust. So, when the foundation of a startup lies on a bond of decades of friendship and mutual understanding, the future that lies ahead is tough but promising. The founders of Travel Triangle share a similar story. School friends Sankalp Agarwal, Prabhat Gupta and Sanchit Garg who once shared school lunches together have paved their way through decades of trust, friendship and hard work and laid the foundation of Travel Triangle, country’s leading online holiday marketplace bringing both the travellers and trusted expert travel agents on a common platform. This is the story of three childhood friends who are all born-fighters, passionate about holiday problems and great problem solvers, which helped them build this startup from 2011 till date.
But, no matter how strong the friendship, one cannot deny the fact that conflicts and disagreements are bound to occur when three intellectuals come together and brainstorm into building a megaproject. When you are laying the foundation of a new venture, there are financial, managerial and idea related disagreements. So, how did they make it through all of it?
When we see through the journey of these three IITians, the learning is to ‘disagree and commit’, which is a unique strategy formulated by the trio. Behind closed office doors, there may be conflicts on various issues but to get to an end result in a way that the growth graph never falls, is what is inspiring. They may disagree on several points, but that is what their key strength is. When different notions are served in a room full of discussions, the end result is always a unique idea to which all of them commit. Going forward this final commitment to an idea/policy becomes their collective goal and then it does not matter whose idea was it, it is now the team’s objective coming from a united forefront.
The inception of the idea of forming this travel startup dates back to their college years. All three of them are avid travellers and it was during one of their travel expeditions to Leh together that sowed the seed of this giant venture. On this trip, they realized the pain points that many travellers, like themselves, face while planning and booking holidays. Being Computer Science Engineers, they observed that the holiday industry suffers from many nuances due to lack of technology. It still mostly operates on pen and paper and here is where their expertise and knowledge came into work. They were motivated to create a technology that would help both the travellers and travel agents. Hence, they built a startup that values every individual travel journey and treats it as a special project.
Over the years of building this venture, there were agreements/disagreements, ups and downs but what kept them going is their expertise and undying trust in each other and even today these school friends share their lunches, no more as school buddies but as CXOs.
