From London travels to a startup: How this young entrepreneur built an app to simplify travel

After studying in London, a young entrepreneur returned to India to build his own startup, an app that brings planning tools into one place. The platform reflects his view that technology should guide travellers without taking control of their journeys.

In Short

• Childhood holidays shaped his wish to experience places like a local
• European trips exposed the clutter of tabs, apps and group messages
• Planning his parents' journey took weeks, revealing a clear market gap

The streets of London soon became familiar to Sumanth Donthi. During his studies, he travelled frequently across Europe, visiting new places and experiencing different cultures. Yet, with every journey, another question began to take shape in his mind: why must travelling involve so much planning and confusion, and why should a traveller not be able to experience a place in the manner he chooses? There are, in every age, individuals who are content to follow the well-worn road, and there are others who, having observed its shortcomings, seek to build another.

For Donthi, his time in London did not end with the customary pursuit of employment abroad. Instead, it became the starting point of an enterprise built around a simple question: why should travelling be so complicated?

A call to motherland and a zeal to join the startup mission, he came back, back to his roots, to do something for the people here.

A lifelong traveller himself, Donthi recalls the experiences of his family trips, which were at times filled with arrangements and complications.

From those early excursions, he developed an interest not merely in visiting new lands, but in understanding the people who reside there, their customs and their ways of life.

Donthi wished, as he puts it, not merely to return as a traveller, but “as a localite.”

That inclination acquired a new force when he travelled to London for his master's studies in management. There, with much of Europe within easy reach, he began travelling frequently.

The old travel agent had once suffered from a scarcity of information; the modern traveller, he observed, suffers from its abundance.

The idea for Roamiyo, his travel technology venture, emerged from this contradiction.

WHY HE RETURNED FROM LONDON

Sumanth Donthi's education has taken him from Bengaluru to Indiana University Bloomington to University College London, as his LinkedIn profile says.

He studied Business, Finance, Entrepreneurship and International Business at Indiana University, completing his bachelor’s degree between 2019 and 2023.

Donthi then went to London to pursue a master’s degree in Management at UCL, completing the course between September 2023 and September 2024.

His professional profile lists him as Founder and Director at ETPL and associated with the Emmvee Group, where his work includes product strategy, AI-first platforms and scalable systems.

The venture that started a few months back grew from the founder's decision to return to India after his studies in London.

He had conducted research into the travel-technology market and surveyed between 500 and 1,000 people before deciding to establish the business in India, specifically Bengaluru.

Donthi also cited the city's position as a technology and startup centre, along with the comparatively lower cost of building a technology enterprise there. He also found in India the young technical workforce required to develop the platform.

The company, according to figures supplied by the founder, now has an internal team of 30 people, alongside advertising and public-relations agencies. Roamiyo has crossed 300,000 downloads, with the founder reporting approximately 9,400 daily active users, 66,000 weekly active users and 250,000 monthly active users.

London, meanwhile, provided another lesson: independence.

FROM TOO MANY TABS TO ONE PLATFORM

The matter became particularly apparent when he returned to India and attempted to arrange a journey for his parents. What he could manage through improvisation was not necessarily suitable for them.

They required direction, though not a rigid itinerary. The research, he recalls, consumed nearly two weeks and involved roughly a hundred tabs and numerous applications.

There, he believed, lay the gap.

Roamiyo was conceived to bring the scattered elements of travel into one place, covering the experience before, during and after a journey. Rather than functioning as a conventional travel agent, the platform is designed as a digital travel companion.

Users enter their destination, dates and preferences, while the application generates a proposed itinerary that remains editable.

Activities can be moved, exchanged or removed; cities can be added or deleted; and the duration of a journey can be altered.

One of the platform's central features is its attention not only to what a traveller likes, but also to what he dislikes.

The application also attempts to accompany the traveller once the journey has begun. According to the founder's LinkedIn profile, it provides information concerning weather, language, time zones and currency, including live currency conversion.

It also contains commonly used local phrases, visa-related information and destination guidance.

Users can view maps, obtain directions, read descriptions and tips about places, and preserve their own notes concerning restaurants and attractions.

Living away from home, in another country and among people from different backgrounds, required him to navigate matters without the immediate support of his family. Donthi says that experience gave him the confidence to pursue an idea that might otherwise have remained merely an idea.

The journey that began with family holidays, continued through London's classrooms and European roads, has now returned to India in the form of Roamiyo.

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