Kantham AI
Designing an AI-powered travel platform connecting creators, operators, and travelers through intelligent trip planning and social discovery.
Travelers often discover experiences through social media but struggle to book them, while operators lack an engaging way to showcase trips and manage enquiries. Existing platforms separate inspiration from booking, creating a fragmented experience.
A unified ecosystem connecting creators, AI-powered trip planning, booking, and operators.
- Stop 01CreatorsShare authentic experiences and inspire travelers
- Stop 02DiscoverCurated content from real trips and local expertise
- Stop 03AI PlanningAI assistant helps discover, plan, and personalize trips
- Stop 04BookingManage bookings and coordinate trips seamlessly
- Stop 05OperatorsTools to create, manage, and grow their experiences
My Role
Founding Product Designer, collaborating closely with founders and engineers.
- Product strategy
- User research
- Interaction design
- Brand identity
Outcome
Established the product foundation across consumer and operator experiences.
- Interaction model
- Design system
- Go-to-market identity
Four phases, from 0 to 1
- Phase 1Understand the market
Competitor review of booking sites, plus interviews with 5–6 operators and a travel company.
- Phase 2Define the ecosystem
Three user groups (travelers, creators and operators) and how content, AI planning and booking connect them.
- Phase 3Design the product
The consumer app, operator platform and AI assistant, reworked as operator feedback came in.
- Phase 4Build the brand
Kantham’s visual identity, from concept to final mark.
Three user groups
A marketplace only works if every side gets something out of it.
- ✓Inspiration from real trips
- ✓A vetted trip, not a generic package
- ✓Answers before they book
Too many options, and inspiration and booking in different places
Bookings for operators
Why travel planning is broken
Competitor reviews and conversations with operators and a travel company kept pointing at the same three problems.
How might we take travelers from a video they love to a trip they trust, without the endless scrolling?
Travelers who find trips through creators need a way to go from inspiration to a vetted, bookable experience, because booking sites bury real experiences under endless generic options.
Where Kantham fits in
From the competitor review: nobody was combining real people’s trips with a curated set of operators you can actually book.
Personalized Onboarding
A conversational onboarding experience that learns each traveler’s interests, travel style, and preferences to personalize recommendations from the first session.
Starting with a quiz risks losing people at the door; putting it just before booking would have given operators travelers’ preferences. We put it first, before account creation, so every traveler sees relevant content from the very first scroll.
Content-first Discovery
A social-first discovery experience where travelers browse authentic content from creators and operators before seamlessly transitioning into trip planning.
AI Trip Planning
An AI assistant that helps travelers discover destinations, answer travel questions, and surface relevant experiences through natural conversation.
Even when travelers were ready to book, they still had questions the experience page didn’t answer. So each experience got its own AI assistant that knows which trip you’re looking at (“Are there vegetarian-friendly restaurants nearby?”). After booking, an AI Insights tab shares fun facts about the trip.
Booking Experience
Simplified multi-day expedition booking into a guided workflow covering trip selection, traveler information, availability, and booking requests.
From any date to real departures
I first designed an open calendar date picker. But operators only run trips in certain seasons (Tadoba tiger sightings around Oct–Nov, skiing Nov–Jan) and on fixed dates. So I replaced it with a month selector, with the actual departures and seats left beneath it.
From WhatsApp chats to a storefront
Operators ran their trips over WhatsApp.
- Itineraries, photos and dates shared chat by chat
- No single place to store trip information
- No engaging way to showcase their trips
Kantham gives every operator one place to run and show their trips.
- Itineraries with photos, videos and travel dates
- Traveler questionnaires built in
- Bookings and an audience in the same app
Creator & Operator Platform
Empowering operators to showcase their experiences, manage bookings, and build audiences while giving creators a space to inspire future travelers.
Building the Brand
Developed Kantham’s visual identity from concept to final mark; creating a brand that represents exploration, direction, and unforgettable journeys.
Kantham curated five scholar-led journeys exclusively for delegates of FIEO (the Federation of Indian Export Organisations) visiting India in September 2026, from Delhi’s monuments and Ayodhya’s spiritual traditions to the ghats of Varanasi and a Himalayan extension, with a dedicated section for them in the app.
People didn’t need a walkthrough. Everyone who tried it moved through it easily, and the visual design was what they mentioned first.
Building Kantham from 0→1 taught me that product design extends far beyond individual screens. Every decision, from user groups and AI interactions to branding and booking flows, shaped how the product worked as a whole. The biggest challenge wasn't designing features; it was creating a connected experience that felt intuitive for travelers, creators, and operators alike.
