Weekend to wake-up call: Vikram Chheda at the Exemplar workshop
January 10, 2026
The Family Managed Business (FMB) community at SPJIMR witnessed a powerful and thought-provoking Exemplar session with Vikram Chheda, Co-founder and CEO of CustomHoliday, leaving participants inspired and introspective in equal measure.
Vikram’s journey is rooted in legacy yet driven by courage. Starting at just 20 in his family’s chemical distribution business and later managing traders and back-office operations at the family’s stock broking firm, he eventually charted his own path in 2013 by founding CustomHoliday. Today, it stands among India’s premier luxury travel companies and has earned the 1st Grand Designer Award from TravellerMade, the world’s leading invite-only luxury hospitality consortium.
He opened the session with a stark, uncomfortable question: “How many of you truly want to be in the family business?” The room fell silent. The discussion that followed explored choice versus compulsion, clarity versus purpose, and emotional realities versus ambition in family enterprises.
Vikram candidly shared that often, it is the hardest for those closest to you to believe in you. Misaligned values and generational gaps pushed him to start something entirely new—ironically inspired by a simple, recurring question people asked him: “Where are you travelling next?”
Key takeaways echoed strongly: build deep domain knowledge, invest in your personal perception, focus relentlessly, and never compromise on honesty. A zero-marketing, word-of-mouth model, the ability to say “no,” and passion for mastery defined his success.
The interactive Q&A covered everything from saturation and AI to handling unhappy customers and one of the most innovative custom holiday – a 17 – night itinerary in Fiji. Vikram concluded with clarity: true differentiation comes from focus, domain expertise, and the courage to forge your own path.
Exemplar is a platform where family business alumni share how they have built successful new ventures alongside their legacy enterprises—showcasing entrepreneurial thinking, innovation, and the courage to reimagine tradition while creating sustainable growth for the future.