Seek Sophie, the Singapore experiences marketplace, listed its first China supply on 14 September 2026: 25 community-led experiences, all in Yunnan province. The listing came after roughly a year of sustained requests from its community and three multi-week scouting trips to the province, TTG Asia reported. Nothing went live until the team had walked the routes itself.
That sequence is the company’s method, not a one-off. Seek Sophie describes itself on its own site as “a marketplace, but a highly curated one”, with the founders going on the ground to test experiences and screening each one for its benefit to local communities and wildlife. The team, the site says, is “scattered across Asia”.
How it started
Co-founder and CEO Jacinta Lim was previously an executive manager at the insurtech MicroEnsure. Co-founder Lina Gedvilaite was an investment analyst at the International Finance Corporation in Ukraine. The two met during an MBA in 2016 and, as Vulcan Post reported, launched the platform with about 260 listings across Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Malaysia. Every listing had been personally tested by the founders, who spent at least two months in each country sourcing supply before the platform opened.
What the Yunnan set looks like
The 25 experiences are built around local hosts rather than a coach itinerary. There is a Tiger Leaping Gorge route led by Naxi guide Nong Bu, a Yunnan speciality coffee experience, and a three-day, two-night Tea Horse Road caravan in Shangri-La with Tibetan guides and glamping. The wildlife tracking is run by former hunters who now work as forest rangers protecting the Yunnan snub-nosed monkey.
Lim frames the curation as a position on capacity rather than a marketing line. “For us, preventing overtourism is really about shaping tourism before a place gets overwhelmed,” she told TTG Asia. A year of demand, three scouting trips and 25 listings is a slow pace by marketplace standards. The company lists what its founders have tested, not what a supplier uploads.
The MICE corporate line
The consumer marketplace is not the only revenue line. Seek Sophie’s corporate business already serves Meta, Google, Disney and ByteDance, and the company is now pushing into international corporate events, TTGmice reported in July. Inbound corporate groups are estimated at 10 to 20 per cent of its overall corporate business.
Lim’s pitch to planners is direct. “Singapore only feels boring if you experience it in the usual corporate way: convention centre, mall, hotel restaurant,” she said. The heritage-led formats the company runs for consumers are being packaged for teams and incentive groups, which gives the curation work a second buyer.
The next twelve months
China is the expansion market. Lim named Sichuan, Chongqing and Xinjiang as the next markets after Yunnan, and the company’s record points to the same treatment for each: sustained demand from the community first, multiple scouting trips second, listings last. On the corporate side, the push into international events puts Seek Sophie in front of the MICE buyers who bring groups into Singapore and increasingly want the same curation when the group travels out.
Travel founders with a story of their own can share it with TravHQ through the site’s contact page.
Key takeaway
Volume marketplaces compete on listing count, and Seek Sophie is betting on the opposite. Its China entry shows what that bet costs: a year of waiting and three scouting trips for 25 listings. For OTAs and DMCs, the lesson is that curated supply in a new market is a scouting budget before it is a catalogue, and for tourism boards in Sichuan, Chongqing and Xinjiang, a curator that screens for community benefit is worth courting before the coaches arrive. We would watch the corporate line most closely, because it is the part of the business that turns curation into repeat orders.
