Sukesh Shetty, Founder & CEO at Away.ai & Anurag, Founder at COO at Away.aI

Travel has always been about the stories we collect, the people we meet and the memories that linger long after we’ve unpacked our suitcases. Yet, somewhere between endless browser tabs, fluctuating airfares, hidden fees and decision fatigue, the excitement of planning a journey often gives way to frustration. Enter Away.ai, a travel-tech startup that’s quietly rewriting the rules of modern travel… not by replacing the human touch with artificial intelligence, but by using AI to bring it back.

Meet Away.ai’s very talented and intrepid Founders – Sukesh Shetty, Founder & CEO and Anurag, Founder & COO. Drawing on years of insider experience in the travel industry, they recognised a gap that millions of travellers had simply learned to live with: booking a trip had become unnecessarily complicated. Their mission wasn’t just to build another travel platform; it was to create an intelligent travel companion that works for the traveller, cutting through complexity with transparency, trust and intuitive recommendations.

What makes this platform particularly compelling is its philosophy. While the world races to make AI more visible, Sukesh and Anurag believe the best technology is almost invisible. Their platform quietly does the heavy lifting… comparing hundreds of suppliers, uncovering better fares, decoding complex booking conditions and simplifying choices… so travellers can focus on what truly matters: the anticipation of the journey itself.

Their vision extends far beyond finding cheaper flights. It’s about democratising travel, empowering first-time international travellers from emerging Indian cities, eliminating booking anxiety and transforming what has traditionally been a transactional experience into something deeply personal, seamless and joyful. In an industry crowded with algorithms chasing commissions, Away.ai is refreshingly built around one simple question: What’s genuinely best for the traveller?

In an exclusive conversation with Sumita Chakraborty, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, TheGlitz, Away.ai Founders Sukesh Shetty and Anurag share the story behind building one of India’s most promising AI-powered travel platforms – Away.ai, the future of intelligent travel planning, and why the next great innovation in travel isn’t just smarter technology… it’s technology that feels wonderfully, reassuringly human.

Over To Sukesh Shetty & Anurag, Founders, Away.ai

Away.ai was born from the belief that travel planning should feel joyful rather than overwhelming. What personal travel experience or frustration inspired the two of you to build the platform, what was the journey building the platform like and what problem were you determined to solve?

It started with watching, not travelling. A few of us spent years at Cleartrip, running the B2B side and the thing we couldn’t shake was this: travel agents kept beating us. Our own platform. They would find fares we couldn’t surface, terms we didn’t even know existed, because they worked a supply chain the internet simply couldn’t reach. Offline operators, consolidator networks, negotiated contracts. None of that showed up on any app.

Meanwhile, everyone we knew was doing the same thing every weekend. Ten tabs. A WhatsApp agent on the side. Incognito mode because someone told them airlines track your searches and after all that effort, still that quiet worry: did I overpay? A Skyscanner report put it plainly: 87 per cent of Indian Gen Z travellers find booking trips overwhelming. We weren’t surprised. We’d watched the system create that confusion.

We left settled careers, spent six months building and pressure-testing with early users, and set out to solve one thing. Take the stress out of booking so the joy of travel starts the moment you book, not only when you land.

Artificial intelligence is transforming almost every industry, but travel is deeply personal and emotional. How does Away.ai strike the right balance between cutting-edge technology and the human desire for authentic, meaningful travel experiences?

We have a simple internal test for this: if the traveller notices the AI, we’ve failed. Travel is deeply personal. People fly to meet someone, to celebrate something, to step outside a routine that’s been wearing them down. Technology should serve that feeling. Not flatten it into a search results page.

So the AI does the grinding. It talks to 500-plus suppliers, compares what’s visible online with what lives in offline networks, sorts through the fine print nobody reads. It does all the work that used to eat up your Saturday evening. What it hands back to you is clarity and a recommendation you can trust. That’s the balance. The technology carries the load. The experience stays human.

Today’s traveller isn’t just looking for the cheapest flight or hotel, they’re searching for experiences that reflect their personality. How is Away.ai redefining personalisation, and what makes your recommendations feel truly intuitive rather than algorithmic?

Most personalisation in travel is just advertising with better targeting. An app pushes whatever earns it the highest margin and calls that a recommendation. We’re building the opposite. Away is designed to know how you actually travel. The choices you tend to make, what you care about on a trip, whether you’d rather save four thousand rupees or sleep an extra two hours and it gets sharper every time you use it.

The real question is: whose side is the intelligence on? Ours works for the traveller. Not for the supplier. The feeling we’re chasing isn’t “recommendation engine.” It’s closer to that well-travelled friend everyone wishes they had. The one who just knows your taste. When the AI stops selling and starts advocating

Trust is one of the biggest currencies in travel. With countless booking platforms and endless online choices, how does Away.ai build confidence and simplify decision-making for travellers who often feel overwhelmed by information?

Here’s the uncomfortable truth about travel booking. Most platforms make money from what they hide. The margin, the terms, the better deal that exists on some other screen. We built Away.ai to sit on the traveller’s side of that table.

We earn only when we find you a genuinely better deal. There’s no reason for us to bury a fee or push the option that pays us more. And instead of drowning you in a thousand near-identical search results, Away gives you a clear answer. Not just on price. On the things people forget to check until it’s too late: baggage, cancellation terms, flexibility if plans change. You book knowing you didn’t overpay. And you didn’t miss something better hiding on another app.

The travel landscape is evolving rapidly, with wellness escapes, slow travel, workcations and immersive local experiences becoming increasingly popular. Which emerging travel trends excite you the most, and how is Away.ai preparing for the traveller of tomorrow?

What excites us isn’t one particular trend. It’s a shift in who’s travelling and what they expect. The TravClan Outbound Index found that 63 per cent of India’s international travellers now come from non-metro cities. Indore, Lucknow, Coimbatore, Surat. These are first-time international flyers who’ve never had a travel agent and shouldn’t have to navigate dynamic pricing alone.

We’re starting where every journey starts, with flights, and going deep. The ambition is for Away to stay with you across the whole trip. As it comes to know each traveller better, the goal isn’t just finding fares. It’s anticipating what you’d want before you ask. Tomorrow’s traveller has less patience for friction and more appetite for meaning. We’re building for exactly that person. Built from inside a system that needed fixing.

Building a travel-tech startup is as much about resilience as innovation. Looking back at your entrepreneurial journey, what have been some of your biggest challenges, and what lessons have shaped your leadership philosophy?

The hardest part wasn’t the technology. It was the leap. Leaving careers that were working fine to build something nobody had asked for. And then asking complete strangers to trust a brand-new name with their money and their travel plans. Earning that trust one booking at a time taught us more than any business plan.

What stuck with us is that in a category full of hype, being honest is the actual advantage. With customers, and inside the team. Stay close to what frustrates the traveller and let that guide the product. Hire people who are better than you at the things that matter and don’t confuse being busy with making progress. We’re six people. We shipped over a hundred bookings in our first month. That felt like proof.

Imagine it’s five years from now. What would success look like for Away.ai? Beyond becoming a successful travel-tech company, what legacy do you hope to create in the way people around the world discover, plan and experience travel?

Success, five years out, is when “let me check Away” becomes a reflex. Not because we spent the most on ads but because people tried us once and stayed. It’s when an ordinary traveller in Surat or Patna can get what only a well-connected insider in Mumbai could get today. The best deal, the right terms, and the confidence to just go.

The legacy we actually care about is changing what booking feels like. Right now it’s cold. It’s transactional. Nobody enjoys it. We want to make it feel as personal as the reason people travel in the first place. If booking a trip stops being a chore you put off and becomes the first good feeling of the journey, that’s enough. That’s the whole thing.

TheGlitz Take

Indeed, Away.ai is proving that the future of travel isn’t about replacing human intuition with artificial intelligence… it’s about using intelligent technology to make travel feel effortless, transparent and deeply personal. By putting the traveller first, Sukesh Shetty and Anurag are redefining the booking experience, turning what was once a stressful task into the exciting first chapter of every journey. At TheGlitz, we love to travel and we believe that’s exactly how travel should begin… with confidence, curiosity and the promise of adventure.