A few months ago, Startup Policy Forum featured
@ixigo founders
@alokebajpai and
@rajnishkumar on our India AI in Action series, brought to you in collaboration with
@OfficialINDIAai mission.
A well thought-through choice as ixigo is one of India’s most tech-forward travel startups, adopting AI differently and rapidly.
Turns out, we hadn’t seen anything yet.
This week, I witnessed ixigo’s launch of TARA and chatted with Aloke and Rajnish to understand why this moment matters so much to them.
This wasn’t an incremental update. Not a wrapper. It was a fundamental reimagining of travel tech in an AI world, or as Rajnish puts it, “AI-native reinvention in practice.”
While most companies add a layer of AI to an existing experience, ixigo has built an entire travel experience around AI.
TARA converses naturally in English, Hindi, and Hinglish, handling complex trip planning and acting on your behalf, even when you’re off the app.
The agentic layer takes it further: auto web check-ins, boarding passes to WhatsApp, hotels called ahead to confirm room readiness.
As Rajnish showed in a genuinely impressive demo, this isn’t AI as a feature. This is AI as the product.
When ixigo calls themselves AI-native (a term thrown around loosely today), they mean it functionally.
Aloke put it best: they’re discovering what AI can do every day, and some of it leaves them “blown away.”
Perfect moment for a mini-sequel on India AI in Action.
This second chapter deserves to be seen.
Watch here 👇