Narayan Mallapur

Thirty-plus years in travel. First startup at 56, second one now. Bengaluru.

September 2026 — onboarding NAMA's first cohort.

●Nowupdated 19 Sep 2026

Building: onboarding NAMA's first cohort, personally. Every setup call shows where the product still assumes too much.
Wrestling with: [NARAYAN: the one product problem taking most of your hours this week]
On the side: PIKL batches continue. Green chilli, ₹220 for 200 g, over WhatsApp.

The full now page

Latest

19 September 2026 · Build Log · 1 min What the first cohort is teaching me Signup takes minutes. Setup is where the truth lives. Notes from onboarding NAMA's first customers, personally.
12 September 2026 · Build Log · 1 min The production bug that changed our QC system We ship overnight fixes. One night we shipped a mistake. The fix took an hour; the system it forced is permanent.
5 September 2026 · Field Notes · 1 min Why AI must never guess a supplier rate A rate is not a number. It is a season, a market, a relationship. Software that guesses it writes beautiful, wrong quotes.
29 August 2026 · Field Notes · 1 min What a three-hour travel quote actually contains Nobody spends three hours writing. They spend it hunting: for the rate sheet, the validity dates, the margin, the formatting.
22 August 2026 · Build Log · 1 min I built my second startup without writing code I cannot code. NAMA exists anyway. What building with AI actually looks like when your contribution is thirty-one years of judgment.
15 August 2026 · Field Notes · 1 min Thirty-one years in travel: what software still misunderstands Software models travel as inventory. Travel is judgment. The gap between the two is where the next good tools come from.

Building

NAMA An AI-first travel operating system for travel agencies, tour operators and DMCs. It turns a 3-hour quote into a 5-minute one, built from your rates, your suppliers, your margins. With Vikas Khanduri. Onboarding our first cohort.
PIKL Green chilli pickle I make myself in Bengaluru. 72% green chillies, groundnut oil, mustard and fenugreek. No added sugar, vegan, FSSAI licensed. ₹220 for 200 g, ordered over WhatsApp.

Roads

10,000 km of Dreams2025 · Team-BHP 47 days, Bengaluru to Bengaluru, 3 June to 20 July. Nine states and three Union Territories in a Hyundai Alcazar. No hotel booked ahead, no fixed schedule: a big change for someone who usually treats itineraries like holy texts. With Radhika; Prateek joined for a leg.
From Amritsar to the Himalayas2025 Two months on the road through Northern India's frontiers.
Arunachal Pradesh2024 Three weeks of self-driving with Radhika in November. Our first major adventure post-retirement.
Khardung Labefore Google A solo motorcycle ride to the highest motorable road in the world, planned before Google existed.

Elsewhere on Substack

About

My career began at 17, balancing night college with work in my family’s food processing and catering business, where I spent about ten years. After a 7-year stint in nationalised banking, I made a leap driven by pure passion: I left banking to join the travel industry, where I’ve spent the last 30+ years building and innovating.

In 2017, Vikas Khanduri and I co-founded Innowayt, a bootstrapped platform that connected travel businesses across 38 countries. Following an exit in March 2024, we joined forces again to build NAMA, our next venture driven by a shared love for tackling complex, exciting industry challenges.

Born and raised in Mumbai, I’ve called Bengaluru home for the past two years. Outside of building businesses, I make artisanal pickles, trade motorcycle rides for long road trips with my wife Radhika, and stay close with our children, Prateek and Tanvi, and their spouses here in Bengaluru.

Write to me at narayan@getnama.app or on WhatsApp, or find me on LinkedIn and Substack.