The Early Days: From Bangalore to Jaipur
Chitra and I started Thrillophilia in 2011, operating out of Bangalore. For the first five years, we were focused on finding our market fit and built a strong team of 60-70 individuals. In 2016, we decided to explore Jaipur as a secondary office location. This decision was inspired by CIIE Ahmedabad’s partnership with RIICO, which had set up an incubation center in Jaipur. Incidentally, Razorpay was also incubated there during its early days before moving to Bangalore so we got excited about the opportunity. The CIIE setup had that quintessential startup vibe, and I absolutely loved the energy in those early days. Big thanks to Chintan for bringing that ecosystem to Jaipur—it truly made a difference!
While we initially hired a few business development folks in Jaipur, we fell in love with the city’s unique vibe. The slower pace, the freedom, and the lack of traffic were refreshing. Frequent visits led us to make a bold decision: to move Thrillophilia’s headquarters entirely to Jaipur.
Growing in Jaipur: The Pros
Starting in Jaipur was transformative. The city’s lower cost structure and the availability of hardworking, smart freshers created a fertile ground for growth. Many of these freshers grew into leadership roles, fueling our company’s expansion. Today, we are a team of nearly 1,000 people, but the journey hasn’t been without its challenges.
One of the city's key advantages is its ecosystem of hardworking and smart freshers. By training and nurturing them, you can gradually build a strong foundation of the company. While it’s a slower strategy, it allows you to establish deep and lasting roots.
Jaipur offers a work environment that fosters deep friendships and camaraderie. Unlike larger metros where workplace relationships can be transactional, here we build, party, and travel together. The shorter commutes—I live just five minutes from the office—translate into more time for work, family, fun and self-development. This balance has been instrumental in creating a happy and productive workplace.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, this familial culture kept us intact. We retained all 150 employees and supported each other on personal levels.
Building Thrillophilia in Jaipur also enabled us to achieve profitability and buy back the company from all our investors in the last two years. These milestones would have been far more challenging to achieve in Bangalore.
The Challenges of Scaling
Building a D2C brand and scaling it to a 100-crore company from Jaipur isn’t overly challenging. However, creating a company on the scale of Zomato, hmmm.. I don't know. Maybe that's a different story, someone who walks the path would be able to narrate in future.
Challenges began to surface as we crossed the 500-crore mark, particularly with talent acquisition in the city. We nearly lost this entire year just figuring out how to hire the right people locally or migrating people from metros. The joining rate of top talent was low as only few understood what we are trying to build from here.
The primary challenge lies in the lack of good startup lateral talent in the city—it’s almost non-existent. If you’re building a tech product company, you’ll need to source talent from outside Jaipur, most of my tech and product team members are from outside Jaipur. Unfortunately, even professionals originally from Rajasthan are hesitant to return, as they doubt the long-term potential of the ecosystem here.
While it’s possible to build a decent-sized company where tech is a business enabler, like a D to C brand, but if tech is your core, establishing such a company in Jaipur becomes ten times harder.
As founders, both our energy and time are finite. We already face numerous challenges—finding product-market fit, scaling the business, developing revenue models—but building a great team is by far the hardest. Personally, I’ve struggled immensely to find the right talent here. Despite countless interviews, I’ve been unable to hire a single developer from Jaipur for our tech product. This stems from the fact that 99% of the tech ecosystem here is service-oriented, and most developers lack a builder’s mindset.
When it comes to AI, the gap is even more glaring. There’s a scarcity of genuine AI talent in the city. Many individuals claiming to be AI engineers merely use GPT, with limited understanding of concepts like agent bots or layering products over AI. Based on my interactions with AI developers in Jaipur, the city is still far from developing a robust tech ecosystem.
Tackling the Challenges
Despite the hurdles, I’ve grown to love Jaipur and its unique vibe. Perhaps you could say I’ve grown comfortable here. To address the challenges, we are currently exploring two potential solutions:
- Building a Green Campus: We’re considering partnering with a college, or the government, or other stakeholders to create a campus with lush greenery and positive vibes. Something you find in Bali / Goa / and a few Singapore coworking areas The idea is to market it as a place with better lifestyle, air quality, large open areas, increased productivity, and freedom from the hustle and bustle of larger cities. We’re still gathering feedback from friends in tech and product in bigger cities to understand what might attract them to Jaipur.
2. Relocating Core Tech: Another option is to move our core tech operations to Gurugram or Bangalore while keeping the rest of our operations in Jaipur. This approach has been successfully implemented by companies like CarDekho when they faced similar hiring challenges.
The Founder’s Perspective
As a founder, making decisions that are best for the business is paramount. Personally, I find my energy and happiness levels much higher in Jaipur, which has been instrumental in building and scaling Thrillophilia. However, like any city, Jaipur comes with its own set of challenges, such as navigating bureaucracy and dealing with old mindset tax officials. That said, these issues are not unique to Jaipur—they’re prevalent across the country.
I had the chance to attend the Rising Rajasthan event this year, and I must say, being in a city like Jaipur made something truly unique possible. My Co-Founder had the rare opportunity to meet PM Modi for a brief but memorable 20 seconds (definitely an experience to cherish!) and engage in a meaningful discussion with CM Bhajanlal about building a vibrant startup ecosystem in Rajasthan. Such moments would be hard to come by in cities like Gurugram or Bangalore!
As I reflect on this journey, I’m very optimistic about Thrillophilia’s future. By 2030, we aim to be one of the largest global travel tech platforms. While Jaipur has been both a boon and a challenge, the city’s vibe continues to energize and inspire me.
I’ll update this story next year with new learnings as we are also WIP.
If there are any product companies based out of Jaipur, I’d love to connect. Dm me at 9916134180. Let’s form a group to share experiences.