India’s B2B travel market is still shaped by fragmented systems, manual coordination and slow turnaround times for agents. Sandeep Kumar, founder and CEO of Zourney.in, believes the sector needs a more unified platform that can help travel agents work faster, serve more customers and improve their overall efficiency.
Lessons from the journey
Kumar said his entrepreneurial mindset was shaped by being close to real operational pain points in travel and hospitality. His earlier experiences taught him that execution discipline and unit economics matter as much as growth, and that businesses built on weak fundamentals struggle to survive in a competitive market.
He also pointed to his experience of building ventures from scratch and becoming profitable early as a major learning. For him, the most important lesson has been that sustainable growth comes from getting the economics right first, and then scaling with discipline.
Solving for a fragmented workflow
According to Kumar, the current B2B travel process is still highly scattered. Travel agents often need to manage flights, hotels, cars and sightseeing through different platforms and multiple layers of communication, which makes the process time-consuming and inefficient.
Zourney.in is designed to address that problem by bringing everything into one place. The idea is to let agents compare, quote and book complete travel packages from a single platform, reducing the time taken to handle each query and making the process far smoother for both agents and customers.
AI from day zero
Kumar said one of Zourney.in’s biggest strengths is that it is being built with AI from the start, rather than adding it later to an existing system. In his view, this gives the company an advantage over older players that are trying to adapt legacy platforms to new technology.
He sees AI as a way to improve speed, reduce errors and help agents become more effective at designing travel experiences. Instead of acting only as order takers, he wants agents to become experience creators who can offer better, faster and more personalized service.
Growth plans ahead
Looking ahead, Zourney.in is focused first on strengthening its India presence. Kumar said the next stage of growth will involve deeper inventory integration and building a platform that can support the changing needs of the market.
He also believes the opportunity extends beyond India. As more digitally savvy agents enter the travel ecosystem, and as more people look for flexible ways to sell travel, he sees strong potential for Zourney.in to expand into global markets in the coming years.
Advice for founders
Kumar’s advice to future entrepreneurs is simple: pay attention to unit economics from day one and stay disciplined in execution. In his view, real businesses are built on profitability and long-term sustainability, not on growth that cannot be supported.