The Mihuru Founding Story
In the early 1990s, Shruti’s family, based in Fiji Islands, was faced with a dilemma. On their relocation back home to India do they take a direct flight, a journey of around 16 hours; or spend all their savings flying the opposite direction to get to India 2 months later via North America and Europe?
Back then, for most “saving conscious” Indians, traveling and that too internationally, didn’t make their list of priorities. Luckily for Shruti, her travel addict family couldn’t wait to explore the world.
This was Shruti’s initiation to traveling, her first education of a world beyond her family. It’s been almost three decades since this trip and Shruti’s love for travel has only grown stronger.
With the entire world turning into a DIY traveler at the turn of the century, traveling only got easier for her. Or did it? With ever increasing access to information, planning a trip only got more frustrating. She spent hours debating where to go, choosing between flights, trains and car rides, and deciding the perfect activities for her and her companions. Frustration levels had scaled new heights.
Despite that, her love for travel saw her zipline in the forests of Costa Rica and paraglide in Switzerland, anything to be outdoors; shop for bohemian crystals and garnets in Prague; taste reindeer meat in Stockholm (well, almost!); trek across glaciers in the Himalayas and sleep on the banks of the Ganges in search of spirituality; join a cycling tour to see the beautiful city of Copenhagen; scream like a child on roller coasters in Disney World while the kids in the family watched in amusement.
Every trip had a different mood with different company. And every single time, online travel companies disappointed. Nobody was providing the level of personalization that any traveler desires. They aggregated content and flight options but did not facilitate decision making, leaving all the heavy lifting on the traveler. Something was amiss!
Shruti wasn’t alone though. Her frustrations were shared by her friend Jonathan Nunez Gonzalez. They truly believed that there was much room for improvement in the travel sector, particularly in the Indian market. This belief was substantiated by an Amadeus report claiming that outbound departures from India represent only 1% of its population. With India’s middle class projected to grow exponentially over the next 20 years, the increase in traveler numbers is expected to skyrocket. The opportunities in the Indian travel market, as Shruti and Jonathan predicted, are limitless.
Further research on the Indian travel market highlighted on the shifting trends in the types of Indians traveling and the way they travel. Access to abundant information online and social media has made the millennial Indian more confident to make travel decisions and self-manage his travels. This emerging breed of young Indian travelers is now looking for personalized experiences that go beyond cheap deals and offers. They want customized, curated content and engaging end-to-end services that don’t pinch their wallet.
Armed with their passion for globetrotting and a deep understanding of the travel industry, Shruti and Jonathan couldn’t help but enter the emerging India travel market ripe with new opportunities. The gaps in the industry were begging to be filled.
This lead to the creation of Mihuru, so that travel junkies could benefit from personalized recommendations on carefully selected destinations and activities, and curated flight options. More importantly, to make travel accessible to everyone, no matter their budget, driven by Shruti and Jonathan’s belief in the power of travel. By the end of 2020, over 270 million new travelers will enter the Indian market as the middle class grows. Yet much of this emerging middle class remains ‘invisible’ to India’s banking and credit system drastically restricting their ability to travel. Mihuru PayLater fills this giant gap by providing instant credit to emerging travelers. Travel will no longer remain an unticked item on the bucket list of millions of Indians.
Mihuru is the disruption that the Indian travel industry needs and deserves!
