From ₹17 to 25,000+ Travellers: The Story of TravelTech Founder Salman Hussain

Quick answer: TravelTech was founded by Salman Hussain, who paid his own school fees, dropped out of college when an education loan did not come through, and started group trips after seeing how agent-booked trips leave travellers stranded. From a first trip that lost ₹4,000 and a day with ₹17 in the bank, TravelTech has grown to about 25,000–30,000 travellers and ₹2 crore in sales.

Some journeys begin with a ticket. Salman Hussain's began with a ledger.

He grew up in a lower-middle-class family where money was counted twice and spent once. While other students went home after school, Salman went to work, and his earnings paid his own fees. Scholarships carried him the rest of the way. He finished school at IPS and earned his place at MIT for a B.Tech.

Then the road turned. His marks were good, but no education loan came. With no funds for admission, he had to step away from college. He took a job as a cashier and became the top performer at the counter. Still, he left. From the first day of every job, he knew one thing: he was meant to build, not to be employed.

The fruit market years

His first real classroom was a small wholesale fruit shop, where he kept the accounts during his first year of college. He watched how a business breathes: margins, credit, trust. Later, with a small personal loan, he started his own wholesale fruit business. It made a profit. But disputes with partners ended it, and Salman had to begin again.

He joined a gym as a personal trainer and earned a nutrition certification. He kept working, kept learning, and kept looking for the problem worth his life.

The problem he could not ignore

He found it in Indian travel. Most trips ran on the agent model. An agent booked the hotel and the cab, and then the traveller was on their own. A cab didn't turn up, or a hotel didn't match its photos, and the customer spent hours on the phone with an agent who couldn't fix anything from far away. Hours lost on a trip of a few days. A holiday turned into a list of complaints.

Salman asked a simple question: what if someone from the company travelled with you?

Strangers who leave as friends

That question became TravelTech's group trips. Anyone can join: solo, a duo, or a group of friends. Stays are verified, vendors are vetted, transport is planned, and drivers are trained. Every group gets a Trip Captain who solves problems on the spot and turns a bus full of strangers into one group. The rules are strict and simple: no alcohol, no smoking, no bullying. That is why solo women travellers feel safe enough to book, and why people come back. You can read more in how TravelTech group trips work.

The first trip, and the first loss

The idea was tested on the people he trusted most: his own friends. Salman lined up the stays and the plan, and took the group to Pachmarhi. Everyone called it the best trip of their lives. TravelTech lost ₹4,000 on it.

The next trip failed outright; not enough people signed up. A few later trips worked. Then, six months in, the lockdown came. The company stopped completely, and money troubles peaked. He kept going alongside his gym job and college.

₹17

There was a day when his bank account held exactly ₹17.

He did not stop. He called every person who had ever answered an old ad, again and again. He designed the posters, edited the videos, built the itinerary PDFs, ran the social media and sent every WhatsApp message himself. After many conversations and a lot of doubt, one customer finally paid an advance of ₹500.

Salman spent that ₹500 on an ad. The ad brought enquiries, he worked every lead, and that trip left with 14 travellers. From there, TravelTech was built one trip at a time.

Building it all in-house

The early website was HTML and CSS files, updated by hand, late into the night, just to show the itineraries. His brother Maaz Hussain, now TravelTech's CTO, learned it all from scratch. In 2025 the team hired developers. Today TravelTech runs on its own systems, built by its own people: website, backend, CRM, plus in-house marketing and sales teams.

Trusted by campuses and companies

The friends' trip to Pachmarhi grew into trips for some of Central India's best-known names. TravelTech has hosted trips for IIT Indore, IIM Indore, IPS, Sage University, IIST, Prestige, Symbiosis, DPS Indore and Smriti College. On the corporate side, clients include TaskUs, TaskSource, American Chase and other leading Indore companies.

The biggest of them all: 350 DPS students on a single trip to Maheshwar.

The milestones

• 2019: TravelTech became a proper group travel company, after years of organising trips.

• 2022: the biggest trip they had hosted until then, 110 students from JLU Bhopal to Manali.

• 2024: 1,200+ travellers to Pachmarhi in one season, and 1,500+ to Manali in one winter season.

• Today: ₹2 crore in sales, about 25,000–30,000 travellers served, the largest single trip of 350 DPS students to Maheshwar, and more than 3,000 active trip WhatsApp groups.

The road ahead

The boy who once paid his own school fees now runs a travel company with ₹2 crore in sales, building trips that thousands of strangers take together. The ledger is longer now, but the lesson is the same one he learned at the fruit market. Earn trust, keep your word, and stay with people when things go wrong.

Salman also shared this journey on LinkedIn.

The journey is still being written. If you want to be part of the next chapter, look at our upcoming group trips, or tell us your dates for a customised trip.