How Sumita Tulsiani transformed years of corporate travel expertise into a tech-driven vision for personalised holidays
Sumita Tulsiani
Co-Founder: TravelDilSe
Industry: Travel & Tourism
Startup/Business Stage: Growing
Location: New Delhi | Mumbai, India
Sumita Tulsiani is a travel industry leader and entrepreneur with 18+ years of experience across MakeMyTrip, Thomas Cook, and FCM. Founder of Travel Dil Se and incubated at NSRCEL, she is building a technology-driven platform focused on creating seamless, personalised, and inspiring holiday experiences for modern travellers.
Some journeys begin with a dream. Others begin with a question so simple that people around you don’t immediately realise its power.
For Sumita Tulsiani, that question was:
“Why can’t holiday packages be as seamless as booking a flight or hotel online?”
At a time when India’s travel industry was rapidly moving online, flights were becoming automated, hotel bookings were getting easier, and digital travel platforms were booming. But one part of the travel experience still felt painfully complicated: customised holidays for individual travellers.
Most companies focused on structured group tours and charter businesses. But Sumita noticed something others overlooked. Travellers were changing. Families, couples, and solo explorers no longer wanted cookie-cutter itineraries. They wanted personalisation. Flexibility. Experiences that felt like them.
And somewhere in that gap, a new company quietly began taking shape. Not just as a business idea. But as a belief that travel should come dil se , from the heart.
Long before entrepreneurship entered the picture, Sumita spent years understanding the travel industry from the inside out. Her journey began with established travel giants like Sita/ Kuoni India and Thomas Cook. But the turning point came when she entered the fast-evolving digital world of MakeMyTrip.
That transition changed everything.
The shift from traditional travel to online business opened Sumita’s eyes to scale, technology, and consumer behaviour in ways she had never experienced before. At MakeMyTrip as well as Thomas Cook, she eventually became Product Head for vacations and holidays, leading everything from destination contracting and logistics to business growth and P&L management.
She helped scale the destination portfolio, introduced chartered destination flights, built hotel and logistics partnerships and scaled operations aggressively. But even during that success, she kept noticing a missing piece. The industry was solving travel at scale. Nobody was solving personalisation at scale. That observation became the foundation of her entrepreneurial leap.
In 2014, Sumita and her then vice-president, now co-founder, decided to build something of their own. A technology-led holiday platform that could simplify customised travel experiences for individual travellers.
It sounded exciting during inception but later, also turned out to be far more difficult than expected. Building travel tech was operationally heavy. The frontend had to feel effortless for customers, but the backend was full of moving parts; suppliers, logistics, inventory, pricing, coordination, and constant conflicts. The platform launched with 19 destinations, but behind every smooth booking experience was intense operational complexity. To make it work, they raised a small seed round to build the tech. Later, another round supported operations. And then, just when momentum was building…
Covid happened.
For the travel industry, the pandemic was not a slowdown. It was a collapse.
Sumita still remembers the first announcement during Covid. Offices shut overnight. Teams were told they would return in a month. But that month stretched endlessly, while salaries remained, rent remained, expenses remained but revenue disappeared.
The company had to pause technology development, cut costs drastically, and shift entirely to work-from-home operations. Decisions became harder. Every expense mattered. Every delay felt heavier. But somewhere between uncertainty and survival, resilience took over.
She and her co-founder kept pulling each other forward.
And from 2022 onward, business slowly started returning through traditional offline channels. Today, the technology platform is being rebuilt, and the larger vision is still alive, strengthened by experience and shaped by resilience.
What stands out about Sumita’s journey is not just business growth, but the clarity and composure with which she has navigated entrepreneurship.
She openly admits there were moments of uncertainty. Questions around technology, scaling, hiring the right people, and finding the right partners. But uncertainty never stopped her from moving forward.
She kept learning.
Over time, entrepreneurship transformed her. Not just professionally, but personally. “I have become more patient. More adaptable. More aware of different personalities and generations.”
Working with Gen Z teams taught her that leadership itself must evolve.
She describes herself as task-oriented, empathetic, and deeply people-focused. Someone who mentors before judging. Someone who listens before deciding. And yet, she also learned an important leadership balance: “At the end of the day, we work with human beings, so leadership cannot exist without empathy. But when someone takes advantage of that empathy, you also need boundaries.” That balance between heart and structure perhaps defines her journey best.
Like many women entrepreneurs, Sumita encountered subtle doubts along the way. Some investors questioned her credibility in the early years. Some conversations carried subtle biases.
But she also experienced strong support from industry relationships built over years of credibility and trust.
Most importantly, she never let external skepticism redefine her own belief.
When people advised her against entering B2C travel, she still went ahead. Because conviction mattered more than consensus.
Key Lessons from Sumita’s Journey
. The biggest opportunities often hide inside operational gaps.
. Entrepreneurship is not always about speed. Sometimes it is about staying in the game.
. Empathy and leadership are not weaknesses.
. You do not need to know everything before starting.
. Conviction matters more than noise.
Today, Travel Dil Se continues to evolve. The technology is being rebuilt. The vision is stronger. The experience is deeper. And perhaps that is the most inspiring part of Sumita’s story. Success did not make her journey meaningful. Persistence did. Because sometimes entrepreneurship is not about uninterrupted growth. Sometimes it is about having the courage to pause without giving up. To rebuild without bitterness. And to keep believing in a vision, even when the world temporarily stops moving.
Sumita’s Achievements
Awards and Recognitions
- Recognised among the “50 Inspirational Women Entrepreneurs in Innovation” in the 2nd edition of the Women in Innovation compendium, released on 17 December 2024 by CII & PWC
- Recognised by Tally Solutions as the Impactful Women Entrepreneur on the International Women Entrepreneurs Day in November 2022
- Winner of “Asia’s 1000 Women Awards” in Travel & Tourism by Wommenovator Global Summit 2021
- Finalist at Times Group She UnLtd Entrepreneurs Awards 2020 in Travel & Experiences
Incubation
- Incubated by NSRCEL – IIM Bangalore (associated with them since 2020)
- Incubated by Nasscom and IAMAI – Mobile 10x, Hartron
Media Coverage
- Covered by YourStory, The Tribune, Startup Talky, Business World,Outlook India, CIOL, Startup Success Stories, Startup Urban, Startup Valley, Tech Register, IANS life, The News Strike, Business Fast, Startup Colleges, Udyam Gyan, Everything Experiential and many more
If you are inspired by Sumita’s story, connect with her on Linkedin
Blog By: Nidhi Vadhera
Startup Strategist | Investor | Author (Romancing Targets)
Connect with Nidhi On LinkedIn
Disclaimer: This blog is based on an interview conducted by Nidhi Vadhera with Sumita Tulsiani, and on the details shared during the discussion.