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Skill 29 · Knowledge Base For Startups
Subchapter 29.33
references/learn/business-growth/explurger-scales-real-world-adventure-with-aws.mdMarkdown5 KBView on GitHub
Explurger is a travel-focused social media platform that gamifies exploration with features that allow travelers to create journeys and bucket lists, chat, discover destinations, and earn rewards. Designed to inspire users to step out into the world, Explurger has grown to more than 16 million users across 75 countries in just three years.
To scale its global community, Explurger turned to AI solutions from AWS to automate operations, enhance personalization, and accelerate innovation. With AWS, the startup was able to reduce the workload of its moderation team, which can now process two posts every second in real time while continuing to roll out new AI-driven features that keep its global community engaged.
Most social platforms are designed to maximize screen time, but Explurger set out to do the opposite. “Why can’t social media inspire real-world experiences?” asks Jitin Bhatia, Founder and CEO of Explurger. “We wanted every feature to reward people for traveling further, not just scrolling longer.”
With features like Automatic Travelogue which records miles, cities, and countries visited, Pin Message which can only be unlocked in specific locations, and Bucket List which inspires new adventures, Explurger is turning social networking into a gamified journey.
As the community grew, so did the content. At its peak, Explurger was seeing two posts every second, with each photo, video, and story requiring moderation before reaching users. A large team of moderators worked around the clock, but the process was too costly and labor-intensive for a platform aiming to scale globally. “We wanted our team focused on innovation, not repetitive tasks,” recalls Bhatia.
The challenge was clear: Explurger needed technology that could automate moderation, keep pace with its rapid growth, and maintain the accuracy expected from a trusted social platform.
Explurger explored multiple solutions in the market, running proofs of concept with different providers, before deciding on AWS. The breakthrough came with Amazon Rekognition (opens in a new tab). It consistently delivered accurate moderation with minimal false positives, while the moderation team benefitted from the deep technical support provided by AWS. “Technology alone wasn’t enough,” says Bhatia. “The support from AWS engineers, who truly understood how to integrate these services, gave us confidence. With AWS, we knew we had a cloud provider who could grow with us.”
The results were immediate. What once required an entire moderation department is now managed by just one person, freeing Explurger to reallocate resources into building the world-first features that define its identity.
With the moderation challenge solved, Explurger turned its focus to innovation. Every image, video, and story is now processed through Amazon Nova (opens in a new tab), which automatically summarizes, labels, and indexes content in real time. This intelligence powers a recommendation engine that makes travel suggestions feel personal, drawing on where users have been, where their friends are exploring, and what’s trending across bucket lists.
“Imagine asking our AI for the top five nightclubs nearby,” Bhatia explains. “You won’t just get a generic list, you’ll see places your friends have already visited, how many followers have them on their bucket lists, and the ratings they gave. It feels like getting advice from a well-traveled friend.”
Explurger is also experimenting with chatbots that weave travel logs into conversations, offering contextual responses that reflect not just a user’s question but their entire journey on the platform. By layering personalization onto travel discovery, Explurger is redefining what it means for a social app to feel truly connected to its users’ lives.
Content moderation, once a bottleneck, is now almost fully automated. New features move from concept to production at speed, supported by reliability and guidance from AWS. User satisfaction has also grown as the platform delivers hyper-relevant recommendations and innovative experiences.
Explurger’s journey is still unfolding as the company continues to test bold ideas and introduce new features. “AWS has always been a reliable cloud provider for startups,” Bhatia concludes. “The support system is strong, and their engineers deeply understand the products. That has been the biggest advantage working with AWS.”
AWS supports startups at every stage of their journey, helping young organizations grow into competitive and confident businesses. As startups scale, many rely on AWS to support that growth, with more than 85% of the startups listed by the 2025 CNBC Disruptor 50 (opens in a new tab) building on AWS. AWS Activate (opens in a new tab) helps founders by providing credits, technical guidance, support, and cloud services. Find out more about the program and learn how you can kickstart or continue your startup journey.