Dharma, a travel startup that plans and sells trips hosted by creators and brands, recently announced $4.7 million in pre-Series A funding.
The round was led by the San Francisco-based VC fund Convivialite Ventures, with participation from FJ Labs, as well as billionaire Stephen Ross, who owns fitness brands Equinox and SoulCycle.
Other notable angel investors included Matt Higgins from Shark Tank and football icon Eric Cantona.
Dharma cofounder and CEO Charaf El Mansouri told Insider the company aims to support creators and brands in organizing exclusive travel experiences by dealing with operations and liaising with local travel operators as needed.
The company was born with the idea of facilitating wellness retreats, but has expanded into running, wine, and has plans to launch food and even dodgeball-focused experiences.
“If I’m a yoga teacher and I have 5,000, 500,000, 5 million people in my community, I have a huge audience that I can monetize via travel experiences, and that are willing to pay a premium to travel with me for my retreats,” he said. “By definition, I’m a yoga teacher, not a professional travel manager. We came in as this travel brand, a service offering where we do all of the heavy lifting.”
Dharma recently partnered with Paramount Global to launch “Paris by Emily,” the first official travel experience for Netflix series “Emily in Paris,” and has helped creators like fitness influencer Kelsey Wells and brands like Pernod Ricard host trips.
The company’s big challenge ahead, which the funds from the raise will be used for, is to achieve scale. El Mansouri said his team plans to introduce more automation in the trip-planning and booking process, and to attract bigger and better partnerships to increase revenue.
Here is the 17-page Notion memo that the cofounders used to raise $4.7 million.
Note: the memo has been redacted to remove some confidential information, including booked revenue, details on product strategy, and the company’s growth targets.
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