Ranjan Singh

Co-Founder and CEO, isango.com
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Ranjan Singh is one of the UK’s leading entrepreneurs in online travel. With over six years experience at some of the biggest companies in the travel industry, he was well-placed to identify and move quickly on the next big thing in online travel… experiences. Following an MBA at INSEAD, Ranjan joined Expedia in 2002 as head of the company’s Netherlands operations. He subsequently became the director of a pan-European business unit which included country operations for the Netherlands and Italy, and Expedia’s private label business across Europe. In mid 2004 Ranjan joined Ebookers as managing director, responsible for hotels. During this time he oversaw the company’s global hotel and destinations services business, including the tours and excursions across multiple brands. . The idea for isango! came to Ranjan whilst he was trying to book a holiday to Australia and New Zealand. Although existing travel websites made it easy for him to book flights and hotels - the logistics - he found it frustratingly difficult to research and book the specific reasons for his trip such as visiting Ayers Rock, snorkelling off the Great Barrier Reef or walking on the Fox Glacier. Google unearthed many small end-suppliers, but nothing that offered wide choice or guarantees of reliability and crucially, very little that could be booked online. The idea for a trusted global aggregator of such product was born! isango! was launched in late 2006 on this single premise, that travel is not about logistics or getting from A to B – it’s about the experiences you have and the memories you make and that these should be searchable and book-able online. In less than two years isango! has become one of the largest aggregators of travel experiences across the globe, built a team of 60 passionate and driven individuals and secured more than $10 million in funding. Ranjan has been key in steering the company’s vision during this time and was named one of the rising stars of UK business by The Observer in 2007. As with many successful and passionate entrepreneurs, Ranjan’s recent travel has been somewhat restricted to the conference and trade show circuit, but in his spare time, he loves to ‘mystery shop’ isango, with recent sampled experiences including- white water rafting in the Himalayas, hand gliding in Rio and the Moulin Rouge in Paris. Next to tick off his list?….a cowboy training camp in the Australian Outback.