Hot 25 Travel Startups for 2024: Dharma

Dharma

Headquarters: Abu Dhabi

CEO: Charaf El Mansouri

Website: Dharma

Founding date: 2021

Investment: $10 million

Dharma's mission is to connect the world through the power of shared experience.

We plan and sell trips hosted by the world’s most inspiring people and brands. Think going on a food journey with Jeong Kwon in South Korea, experiencing the passion of a Manchester football derby with Eric Cantona or learning vedic meditation with Light Watkins in Mexico.

PhocusWire coverage

• Dharma raises $4.7M to scale marketplace for brand-led travel
• Paramount teams up with travel startup for "Emily in Paris" trips
• Influencers are a new class of travel agents - but lack the right tools

Founders Charaf El Mansouri, Leah Howe, Nisma Benani and Brice Carpenter

Strategic goals for 2024

For Dharma, 2024 will be about building true value. To achieve our goal of becoming the dominant marketplace for curated travel experiences globally, we plan to continue our growth momentum by attracting and retaining the world’s most inspiring people and brands.

We are also working to launch a powerful platform that allows the medium- and long-tail creators to plan and promote trips to their communities. 

Lessons learned since founding

We all hear that resilience is the number one trait of successful founders, but we also learn from others that holding on for too long to too little can be a startup’s undoing. Finding the right balance of these two equally idealized principles is challenging but important, particularly at the early stage when the wrong track can become the right one from one day to the next. 

It’s been an interesting few years! Venture-backed philosophy changes with the market - when we started, it was growth at all cost, today it’s profitability at all cost. Being venture-backed comes with the expectation that founders will be able to realistically build the company into a $1 billion-plus company but exactly how that will need to be delivered may evolve - be prepared for that.