We are IRL. In Real Life.
Big companies plan your trip through a call centre. Someone in another city, reading from a screen, who will never see your face.
We do it differently. We are from Kolhapur. You can walk into our office, have a cup of tea, and plan your trip face to face. The person who plans your trip is the same person who answers your call when you are standing at the airport.
We started IRL with one simple thought: people in our city dream of the same trips as people in Mumbai and Pune. Kashmir. Dubai. Bali. Europe someday. But they want someone they can trust. Someone real. Someone local.
That is us. We plan. You travel.
The person behind IRL
Koustubh Rajepandhare
Entrepreneur · Startup Operator · Travel & Experiences Leader
Koustubh Rajepandhare is an entrepreneur and business leader with over 15 years of experience building and scaling businesses across technology, food-tech, quick commerce, e-commerce and travel.
He founded Ressy, a restaurant-tech platform that worked with thousands of restaurants and built technology connecting restaurants, consumers and payment ecosystems. Ressy was subsequently acquired by Eatigo, the TripAdvisor-backed restaurant reservation platform, following which Koustubh took over as Eatigo's Country Lead for India, leading its expansion and operations in the country.
Koustubh was later part of the core team at Zepto during its earliest days, helping build and scale one of India's first large-scale 10-minute quick-commerce operations. As part of the leadership team, he contributed to the rapid rollout of the business across cities, stores, operations and teams during the formative phase of what went on to become one of India's most recognised quick-commerce companies and is now progressing towards the public markets.
His operating experience also includes leadership roles across high-growth businesses such as Groupon and Ninjacart, giving him extensive experience in scaling consumer businesses, operations and marketplaces.
In the travel industry, Koustubh has managed and scaled Eagle Crest DMC's destination operations across Thailand, Bali, Vietnam and Dubai, gaining deep on-ground experience in contracting, destination management, holiday operations and customer experience across some of Asia's most popular outbound travel markets.
At IRL (In Real Life), Koustubh brings together this combination of technology-led thinking, large-scale operations and destination expertise to build a travel company focused on one simple objective: making holiday planning more transparent, personalised and dependable.
His philosophy for IRL is straightforward: use technology to simplify travel, but never take the human expertise out of it.
The numbers so far
30+ countries travelled
1,00,000+ travellers served by our team
20 years combined in travel
1 city we call home
Real numbers only. These update as they grow.