“What good is a journey if it does not change you” - KnowledgeYatra,The Beginning

Why did KnowledgeYatra (KY) come into being??

There can be many versions of how or why KY was created depending on who is writing and this is my version. KY, or doing something like KY, has its roots in 2 basic ideas:

· Sharing the learning gathered by its founders during their travels and time spent outside their countries;
· Combining business and traveling into an entrepreneurial venture;

During my internship organized through the biggest student-run organization in the world AIESEC (www.aiesec.org), as well as business & pleasure trips to different parts of the world, I realized that there is so much more that a country and its people have to offer than what meets the eye, especially India and the need for inter-cultural understanding. Originally KY was started with the intention to create Learning and Traveling focused trips to India to present its culture, economy, diversity and heritage to the youth. This gradually transformed into an idea to bring youth to India and to take Indian youth to different parts of the world on similar trips. This idea very closely married my passion for doing something new, for traveling and meeting new people. As an individual I am always excited by new ideas and creating business that have a positive social, environmental and economical impact for all stakeholders and KY achieves all three and more. One thing about the idea of KY that excites me the most is that if the programs and trips under KY are planned & executed well they benefit all the people involved in them. KY is a win-win for all.

In the last 4 years I have had a few interesting experiences in business and entrepreneurship and I realized that I will not be ale to do a certain thing for too long IF it is not unique and if it does not involve me on a higher level. It needs to satisfy me in more than just making money, it has to constantly call to my creativity and innovativeness in order to keep me interested in it.

Traveling was always my passion and it made me realize the importance of inter-cultural understanding. It made me realize how wrong are we to just take other people and cultures for granted, or say “that is how they are..!” based on what we see on TV, or hear in the news, or read on the Internet. It made me realize that people, no matter where they are from, are similar, face similar problems in life and have similar dreams and aspirations. Finally it made me realize how important it is to travel and experience these feelings, especially for today's youth who are increasingly living in a globalized world, where we are not isolated from what happens to people in Kenya, or to forests in the Amazon, or the glaciers in Argentina, or to the women and children in Afghanistan.


“What good is a journey if it does not change you” or “DO NOT TRAVEL, IF YOU DON'T WANT CHANGE” (These are not copied from the Net, written by yours truly :) Some might find this obvious, but most will not, because when they travel either it is too short or they travel with so many preconceived notions that they stay closed during their travels and forget to change who they are. When we travel and only if we are open, we see so much, hear so much, feel so much and experience so much it is really difficult not to change, at the least in a small measure. When I went for my AIESEC internship to Poland in 2005, I was 21 and thought that I am going to be a certain way my whole life and was quite closed and short-sighted, if not narrow-minded. Today, if I look back at that time, it is safe to say that those 4 months in Europe taught me more about myself and life than my 3 years in Graduation. It changed me a whole lot and gave me a new perspective in life. All this happened because I met some of the most interesting people, they taught me so much and I rubbed off a bit of my culture and values on them too, and some of them are my closest friends now. This experience made me realize that the only thing that is permanent is change and there are no wrongs and rights, there are only perspectives.

KY is an idea that for me aims to create a memorable experience that induces inter-cultural understanding and changes people for the better. It aims to combine my ideas, emotions, experiences and passions and create unforgettable 'people experience'.

- Udit Hooda

(Co-founder of KnowledgeYatra India)