The Itch List Helps Prioritize Your Bucket List

Smriti Modi, part of our Travel Massive Singapore chapter helps travellers keep track, priorities and achieve their bucket list goals with The Itch List. 

We’ve taken the opportunity to ask Smriti a couple questions about how she’s been able to manage and grow a travel startup, check it out:

Who is your startup for?

Young working professionals who are itching to have new experiences in life but often put them away for ‘One Day’.

What inspired you to create this startup? 

I have always been quite driven about knocking things off my own itch list. After working for a couple of years, I started actively pursuing things on my list. I did a course in paragliding, jumped out of a plane, climbed mountains, jumped off some, took up cycling, started my own blog and did a lot of crazy things that I had long waited to do.
Sometime around then, the seed of The Itch List germinated.

What is your startup about?

The Itch List is a community, a social platform that enables, assists and even pushes people to do the things on their Itch List.

List all the things you want to do and add a scratch-by date to each, to keep reminding you of your itches. If you’re having trouble scratching them alone, you can partner with other members or invite your friends to join you. 

How did you build your startup?

Starting up on my own had been on my itch list for many years, and around August 2014, I grew the confidence and determination to give this an honest try. I quit my job and plunged full time into building The Itch List.

How is your startup disrupting the travel scene today?

Setting mandatory deadlines to every ‘itch’ solves for procrastination; Connecting with like-itched people helps if you’re seeking company; a chit-chat section is good for exchange resources and for inspiring action (we have an active blog of stories from the community and also host meet-ups).

It’s a unique platform, specially in the Indian market and while travel experiences are a major chunk of the motivation to build this site, The Itch List is also for non-travel goals.

How did you get your startup off the ground and gaining traction?

The fortunate thing about The Itch List is we have always had market validation. We had more than 500 subscribers even before a beta site was up. The Itch List won Courtyard Marriott’s Young Entrepreneur Challenge which helped kickstart the business.

Do you have any tips for new entrepreneurs who want to create a successful startup?

No matter how much we read about best practices and success formulas, every startup is going to face it’s own challenges. My only suggestion is – stay at it. You’ve got to be persistent even when it seems like everything is falling apart.

Travel Start-Up is a monthly series that profiles unique online travel start-ups in the Travel Massive community around the world. Connect with The Itch List on Facebook and Twitter.