Image provided by Chinca Travel
As they say, “Travel opens your heart, broadens your mind, and fills your life with stories to tell.” Ashley Sharma, Founder of Chinca Travel, was once an adventure-seeking girl, determined to travel the world and collect memories. Now, she is an Entrepreneur using her experiences to make travel comfortable and accessible to others.
From being recognized on Shark Tank to creating the famous travel belt, which ensures that your bags do not fall off your carry-on when you’re traveling crazily through the airport, Chinca Travel is winning the hearts of many customers.
Read ahead to discover how Ashley Sharma is making travel effortless, stylish, & stress free!
digitalundivided:
Ashley, what inspired your love of travel and your desire to become an entrepreneur in this space?
Ash Sharma, Chinca Travel:
We had a very humble beginning. My dad started working for United Airlines about a month after I was born and he still works at the company as a mechanic there for over 35 years.
Because of him, and our ability to talk about airplanes and to fly standby, I had this innate love of travel. I felt very lucky because otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to visit so many places that I had as a child. Because of him, I really loved visiting new places and learning about different cultures.
As far as becoming an entrepreneur, I know this might sound silly, but ever since I was a kid, I just always had this weird gut feeling of wanting to have my own business. The first time I ever saw someone who looked like me as a business owner was Selena, when she opened her boutique in Corpus Christi. That was the first time I saw a reflection of a woman like me on television and felt very connected. From that moment on I wanted to create something of my own. I have worked at mostly startups my entire life. Although they weren’t my businesses, when you work at a startup, you feel like it’s yours, you feel like you’re building something. I feel really fortunate to now be building something of my own. It’s exciting to mesh two of my loves into one business — travel and entrepreneurship.
Image provided by Chinca Travel
digitalundivided:
Selena really was the woman to look up to in the 90’s for Latinas and for so many women of color! I’m so glad you mentioned her. It also seems to be a common thread amongst entrepreneurs within our community, that even as children as young girls, they kind of knew that there was this restlessness inside of them to create and to build.
Ash Sharma, Chinca Travel:
Sometimes it’s really hard for women of color to know what to do with that feeling. Because we don’t have the resources or, maybe we don’t have the mentors in our life to suggest a path for getting to become an entrepreneur or starting something on your own.
It takes a lot of knowing your gut really well, being determined, and passionate about what it is you want to do. I’m 14 years into my marketing career and I didn’t become an entrepreneur overnight. Part of what I love to tell aspiring entrepreneurs or young girls who look like me is that it’s not a linear path. I always used to get ahead of myself. I used to think about the end like, how do I get a Vogue feature for my company versus now, where I think about how I can email the Vogue’s editor. You just have to find a place to start, and take small steps. That’s what really helped me in the success of Cincha — not thinking about the big picture all the time and just doing something every day to build your business.
digitalundivided:
That takes us into our next question, which is about your founder origin story. What inspired you to start your company?
Ash Sharma, Chinca Travel:
Well, I tend to be an over packer and I’m also a mostly carry-on girl, only. I hate checking in my bag. The first time I was on vacation with my boyfriend, now fiance/co-founder, he was like, “Ash, why are you struggling with your bag so much? Maybe you should get a bungee cord and attach it to your luggage?”
I looked at him straight in the eyes, and was like, “Do I look like a bungee cord type of girl?”
We both chuckled at that moment. Then we thought that maybe there’s something here? There isn’t really a stylish and functional travel accessory that exists for the modern traveler that allows you to secure your personal carry on. So we did what every entrepreneur does. We went on Google and didn’t really find anything in our search.
We took one step at a time to figure out how we can create a product. We both have very different backgrounds. James (my co-founder) is a civil rights attorney whereas I’ve been in marketing for the majority for my career at startups. We put our brains together to develop what is now the travel belt, which is super exciting. But it wasn’t a sexy path — we had to do a lot of learning and researching.
Image provided by Chinca Travel
digitalundivided:
As somebody who doesn’t necessarily come from a materials or manufacturing background, what are some of the insights or tips you have for entrepreneurs who might be interested in product design or product manufacturing, but don’t necessarily have a background in that space?
Ash Sharma, Chinca Travel:
In our case, not only did we want to create products that were colorful and fun, we wanted to make sure we were using quality materials. I can’t tell you that there was anything sexy about how we found our manufacturer. We did a Google search and found a technical designer on Fiverr or Upwork to create the travel belt we had drawn on a napkin. Then we sent that tech pack to a few different manufacturers across the world and ended up finding one that was up to our standards. The rest is history — there’s a lot in between all of those steps.
digitalundivided:
Chinca Travel has a major “give back” component to its business model. Can you tell us more about that?
Ash Sharma, Chinca Travel:
We wanted to make sure that whatever we created gave back to our community because the only way James and I were able to get ahead in life was because of people who gave to us. For me, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to travel as much as I did as a kid if my dad didn’t work for United Airlines. James grew up homeless and came from a very humble background. The first time he got on an airplane was when he was going to visit colleges. We both felt like travel isn’t accessible to everyone. I felt so lucky the moment we found Miles for Migrants because it had that perfect travel parallel to it. They have been an amazing partner and we’ve donated over a million airline miles and plan to double that this year. We’ve been able to help migrants in Ukraine, Afghanistan, and all throughout the world, reuniting them with their families or getting them out of a really terrible situation.
Image provided by Chinca Travel
digitalundivided:
How did digitalundivided’s *Do You program help you either grow as a founder or help you in your business?
Ash Sharma, Chinca Travel:
It was the first entrepreneurial program I had ever joined, so I didn’t know what to expect. Being an entrepreneur gets lonely. I really feel that I found that with digitalundivided, you have a community that you can reach out to and be like, “I have a question about this. Have you ever dealt with that?”
And as an entrepreneur, it was hard for me at first to ask for help. Now I feel like I could just reach out to digitalundivided and see if they have a connection. Also, I will say that the mentorship as well has been just so incredible. I just feel so lucky to now have a network of people that I can tap into, whether it’s for a super high moment in my Cincha career or a low one, where I need some support.
*The one-year digitalundivided Do You Fellowship Program helps founders access the tools, resources, and networks necessary to supercharge their businesses. We aim to support Entrepreneurs in their quest to reach the $1 million mark in revenue and/or funding. As we expand our efforts, digitalundivided is excited to host its first-ever digitalundivided Do You Fellowship Pitch Competition in Newark, NJ on October 18, 2023, sponsored by Prudential and Tiger Global.