After you have walked the main streets and visited the big attractions in places, you’re probably ready to “uncover the unexpected”, and that’s what Singapore-based experiential travel specialist, Seek Sophie, wants to help you do.
Seek Sophie’s two co-founders, CEO Jacinta Lim, and COO Lina Gedvilaite first met at INSEAD business school, where an immediate connection was formed around a common drive to delve deeper at a business level, through culture and discovery – and do so in a way that could empower the ‘smaller players’ of travel in the process.
“We saw we worked together quite well,” recalled Gedvilaite, speaking during WiT Singapore’s Bootcamp. “We had a similar work ethic, and both of us wanted to get things done well.”
The results of these study-break chats would soon become the building blocks for the business that became Seek Sophie: “We thought, let’s do something that’s meaningful within the travel space.”
“We both wanted to do something with impact,” recalls Lim. “It wasn’t just about building a business – it was more, ‘how do you build a business that actually like changes the world and makes a difference?”
So what was the first listed activity on the platform? Recalling her first scouting trip down Borneo’s Kinabatangan River, a natural area blessed with unique biodiversity like orangutans, the world’s tiniest pygmy elephants, and proboscis monkeys, Gedvilaite swore she’d been to this remote place once before.
“It was the kind of childhood National Geographic dream: the type of stuff I used to watch as a kid,” she describes. “And I felt like I was here. It was the kind of an adventurous place that I wanted to be in,” she recalls. “And yeah, that was the first experience that landed on our platform.”
But then came the pandemic and the co-founders had to switch from seeking remote, exotic places to looking closer to home for their inspiration and find new ways to navigate a treacherous financial path. Amidst a travel standstill, they found new ideas in Singapore, discovering small bee farms run by “passionate, heartfelt people”, and other hidden gems that their customers enjoyed discovering.
Lim said Covid also provided the company an immediate test of Seek Sophie’s mission and values. “In 2020, one of our big innovations was, ‘How do we keep helping these mom-and-pop shops? For a lot of these hidden experiences in Singapore, people didn’t actually know that they existed at all. So, our job was helping people discover that.”
Fortunately, they were also allied with a passionate community of photographers, all temporarily stuck in Singapore: “So we thought, okay, it’s a win-win situation. We just paired the two together,” Lim recalls. Amidst travel’s toughest times, 2020 saw the rise of Seek Sophie’s creative community – and led to the company growing exponentially from there.
Seek Sophie CEO Jacinta Lim, and COO Lina Gedvilaite, being interviewed by Klook’s Sarah Wan during the WiT Singapore 2024 Bootcamp
Balancing safety and sustainability in the search for remote experiences
Later returning to work in remote places, Gedvilaite was forced to navigate some potentially alarming situations around her personal safety, reminding her that the company’s mission must be to better protect other travellers: “As a solo female traveller, you know that these experiences are out there, and it can really change how we perceive travel. So a super-important part of what we do is making sure that we’re getting out there and finding the best partners only – so that our customers only have really good experiences.”
Running an ethically geared company also meant confronting some tough business decisions. One Komodo boat trip that proved hugely popular for viewing whale sharks, was revealed to be a success because fishermen were feeding the sharks to bring them in.
“That was a really difficult decision, because for us, feeding is a no-no,” recalls Lim. “Once you feed wildlife, you disrupt the natural feeding patterns, and then they become a lot more vulnerable to predators. Yet on the other hand, because the fishermen were doing that, they got a lifeline,” she notes.
“That was also one of our most popular experiences. But we made the really difficult decision to pull the plug –after a lot of internal debate. We just thought, it’s not aligning with our values. So we just pulled it.”
As two co-founders with a distinct moral compass, how does Seek Sophie see the future of these wild and precious places? “I think we are kind of a tipping point for our environment,” says Lim. “It’s incumbent on everybody, but especially on the travel business, to think about how we make sure that our work is for the better,” she noted.
The Indonesian Ministry of Tourism recently chose Seek Sophie as one of its exclusive partners to promote stable tourism offerings. “If an organisation as impactful as they are talking about sustainable tourism, it’s actually quite hopeful for the future.”
The note of hope is one she extended to all fellow travel partners, to safeguard the next generation of travel custodians. “I guess my hope would be, can we have all these conversations? Can all the travel leaders in this space start having these conversations? And is the stuff that we’re putting out there, making the world better in the next 10 or 20 years?”
