A Travel through Traveller Kids’ Journey

It was the innovation in a fascinating visiting card that caught Alok’s eye at a Kids Expo in Delhi. And, it was this wonderful recognition that caught my eye on TRHS. The culmination of the two is what intrigued me to write what you’ll read below 🙂

Education meets creativity and learning becomes fun; here’s to a startup worth knowing about. Traveller Kids, Shitij Malhotra’s entrepreneurial venture makes fun educational games and DIY activities that focuses on experiential learning for children. 

Shitij, a computer science engineer by education, worked in a consultancy for a few years before he started his first company Fresh Lime Media. Priyanka, the co-founder completed her MBA in marketing, worked in digital advertising for 2 years before she hopped onto the entrepreneur bandwagon. 

“Inspiration exists but it must find you working” – Pablo Picasso. And, this techie found his motivation in the words of India’s former President. “Dr. APJ Kalam said something to the effect, if you don’t have something available in India, create it, rather than migrating to the west.” That coupled with the innovation bug of creating something absolutely new was what ignited the spark to start Traveller Kids. 

Shitij says, he had just sold his first company that was into e-learning for Corporate before the idea for Traveller Kids came about. Once while he was casually travelling he realized that kids don’t get to travel as much in life when young, so why not make them experience different countries from home. Their love for travel and the need to share this passion with everyone, especially the little ones is what shaped this unique business.They started with a subscription based service for getting country encyclopedias on auto pilot. 

“While the product was great, it took a lot of convincing before anybody was buying. So we pivoted to just selling all the individual components in retail and it picked up!”

He recalls starting out initially from his mother’s clinic. The patient’s room transformed into a start up office! A small team with proven products; they seemed to have put in the right ingredients to get out a success story. 

With 5 designers and no experience in the games business they forayed to make a mark in the market. Today they have moved to a level when their new games often sell out in the first month itself. They are present across 15 offline and 5 online channels and plan to hit around 500 stores in the next 18 months. “We have around 25 products and want to reach a portfolio of around 200 products in 2 years.”

Small beginnings make great endings.. The enterprising duo 

Traveller Kids products stand out for three reasons. Firstly, the educational value that every game has – which is all original IP, secondly for the international quality and design and thirdly and most important reason is that the products engage the kids in such a way that they want to spend more time with their games. And this means away from the TV, iPad, computer – something which every parent is worried about today.

His target customers are parents; progressive parents who want their kids to get access to the best education and entertainment available. “We originally thought it would be the educated double income middle class from Tier 1, but were pleasantly surprised to see some parents from extremely humble backgrounds and small towns who want their kids to be exposed to the best.”

Interactive World Map Kit, Traveller Kids Flagship product

Their most popular product is Interactive World Map Kit. It’s a non-tear fun colourful map, 3 feet x 2 feet in size, with capitals, famous monuments, seven wonders, highest/tallest/fastest in the world drawn on it. It comes with hundreds of stickers of country names, flags, currencies, names of monuments, etc. It’s the best and most fun way to remember and learn more about different countries. Shitij quips in saying “Also we’ve made it really attractive (unlike the usual maps) so kids love it.” “Our map now comes with an augmented reality app which lets kids see the countries come alive with multimedia.” Now, that’s a seller!

Next I move on to asking him his typical day routine to which Shitij confesses that contrary to what most people think – I don’t make new games all day every day. Nor do I get to play them! Most of our day goes in tapping new markets and channels to sell our products.

“We have realized that even the best product needs to be aggressively sold to make an impact and that’s where all our energies are.” In office, I’m building the database of contacts, calling distributors, affiliates, and tracking sales from all our channels. All the other time goes in tracking and managing production. One week every month we spend on making new games – conceptualizing them and overseeing the design team and manufacturing team bringing it to life.

A satisfactory moment, the time to pat your back weaves in with every entrepreneur’s story and Traveller Kids is also no different in here. It’s of course when they receive awesome compliments, but the best part is when their customers choose Traveller Kids products as return gifts for their child’s birthday after using the products. He sure deserves three cheers as he mentions that they get to experience this every week! And Shitij strongly believes that this re affirms his faith in why they are building this start-up.

Keen to know how do they go about marketing their business and what works best for them, I dropped in this question to him. Seeding products in different cities through exhibitions has apparently done very well. But, he is happier with the phenomenal job his channel partners are doing in spreading the word. “They do it both for money as well as because they believe in the product.” Shitij adds. 

With an aim to be the world’s finest edutainment games company with a global brand recall, Traveller Kids is making a definite move everyday.

“We want our games to be part of every school’s curriculum.”

He admits that plagiarism, the fear of getting copied is what frightens him out of his wits. But a true entrepreneur that he is, he is quick to mention that the solution for this is to be stronger, move on and create better versions to be on top of the game.

His last word to fellow entrepreneurs before he signs of – “Build world class products out of India. You will be surprised by the amount of compliments and business which quality brings with it. Also, concentrate on sales. Product development is just 5% of a business, money is made when you are able to sell your products.

You can follow them on @TravellerKids

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About The Author:

Sunaina Shenoy is associated with a startup, Parentune. And is involved in getting brands to leverage and engage the rapidly growing parent members’ community. She is a proud rodinhooder and even more proud to be an Editorial Asst. for The Rodinhoods.  She takes delight in dabbling in different things and is still trying to find her mark in getting good at something. She likes to showcase unsung heroes and the story behind the story is what intrigues her the most. Knowing about new ventures interests her. A hobby writer, she is developing her skills to get better at it.  She has had her stint of failure with a startup but risen back to re learn the process. A huge proponent of giving back to society she tries to live up to it in any little way she can.  A clean India is her dream.

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