CO-FOUNDER & CEO, XENI
He is building a Web 3.0 operating system for travel - and betting you will never notice the blockchain underneath.
Walk into the travel industry's back office and you will find a maze of pipes nobody has cleaned since the 1960s. Sachin Narode noticed the pipes. Then he started replacing them.
At Xeni, the company he co-founded in 2021 and runs as CEO, Narode is building what he calls an operating system for travel: a single platform where a web storefront, a booking engine, a CRM and a payment-settlement layer all live together. The pitch is deceptively domestic. Anyone - a solo agent, a hotel group, an enterprise - can launch a branded booking site with access to wholesale resorts, flights, cars, cruises and activities. No code required, or full code if you want it. The wholesale rates that used to hide behind gatekeepers are suddenly on tap.
Underneath that friendly surface sits the part most founders would put on a billboard and Narode tries to hide. Xeni runs its money and data settlement on blockchain, built on the energy-efficient Hedera network, so that the moment a booking is made, every party - traveler, supplier, professional - is squared up instantly, transparently, with the record intact. The travel supply chain's oldest tax is delay. Narode is trying to delete it.
His reasoning is blunt and a little heretical for a Web3 company. "Every time an airline ticket is touched in the GDS, there is a cost," he has said. And again: "Every time money and data exchanges, there is delay in settlement. There is loss of record. There is miscommunication." Xeni's entire design philosophy follows from those two sentences.
"Nobody needed to learn about blockchain to benefit from blockchain. We made it so web two friendly that there is no web three angle to it."
— Sachin Narode, on building Xeni
Most founder bios read like a straight line. Narode's reads like a scavenger hunt. He trained in general medicine in Maharashtra, picked up a master's in biological sciences in San Antonio, did molecular-biology and sleep-medicine work tied to the University of Pennsylvania, then collected an MBA from Penn for good measure. Somewhere in there he built a custom algorithm and sold it to a major global company. Somewhere else, he created a mango market in the United States and got tagged, permanently, as "the Mango Man."
Founded and later sold a health-monitoring wristband company. The first proof that he ships hardware, not just slides.
Co-founded a boot camp for mission-driven entrepreneurs with award-winner Marva Allen. He served as its CTO and co-founder.
Sr. Manager and advisor on technology & data, where he stood up offshore teams of 40 to 60 people and shipped multiple applications.
Opened a US market for mangoes. Proof that "distribution" was an obsession long before it meant travel inventory.
While at Penn he wrote a complex algorithm and sold it to a major global company. Curiosity that paid rent.
Investments span blockchain, cybersecurity, AI, healthcare, food & beverage, events, executive protection and private charter.
"There is no perfect plan or recipe. Show up for execution whenever required."
"Ideas are great, but I believe in execution. So execute, execute, execute."
"Time is a valuable asset only if you contribute to making it valuable."
He follows interest, not categories. The throughline is not an industry - it is the habit of finding a broken system and trying to fix the settlement underneath it.
Ask most Web3 founders why they chose their chain and you get a manifesto. Ask Narode and you get an engineering checklist. "Transaction per second was one. Gas space was another. And also we were a very environmentally conscious company."
That is the tell. Xeni's blockchain is not a brand - it is a utility, picked the way you would pick a database. The vision-to-build took roughly 12 to 18 months, and the brief never wavered: make the chain invisible, make the settlement instant, make the agent's life easier. If the technology shows up in the user's face, the design has failed.
Old way: ticket touched, money delayed, record lost, parties confused.
Xeni way: booking made, everyone squared instantly, record intact.
Narode joins the Hedera podcast to talk through how Xeni brings the power of blockchain to travel - and why trust, not tokens, is the point.
youtube.com/watch?v=9DjqA4-Run8The dream is not a logo on a chain. It is a world where anyone can sell a trip at wholesale rates, get paid instantly, and never once think about the machinery making it possible.
The Xeni thesis, in plain terms
One profile called him "the NRI entrepreneur with the Midas touch" set to disrupt the travel space. He did not argue.
His listed interests outside work: culinary arts, travel, and chasing new experiences. The mango thing suddenly makes sense.