A new platform for exploring cities with personalized itineraries has its roots at Penn.
Disco — which recently emerged from beta testing — was co-founded by Noor Badal Sharma, a master’s student in Behavioral and Decision Sciences at Penn. The platform currently has around 300 users across 25 cities.
Designed to help users build a taste profile, Disco recommends destinations and generates itineraries based on their interests. Users can alter their itineraries, save locations, create wish lists, and keep notes about places they visit.
Sharma said her Behavioral and Decision Sciences studies at Penn influenced the product, particularly through the distinction between stated and revealed preferences.
“People generally only talk about their preferences in terms of what they know, but when they’re exposed to new things, they realize that ‘Oh! I could be into kayaking,’” Sharma said in an interview.
Disco also provides information about a destination’s history, ownership, and other context when available — “a Spotify for travel,” as Sharma called it.
She began developing the platform in February 2026 alongside Pratham Arora, Disco’s chief executive officer, and Abhiyansh Arya, its chief technology officer.
“When we started off, the core problem we wanted to solve was mediocre recommendations that don’t let you explore a city meaningfully,” Arora wrote in a statement. “We had a good sense of what makes a place worth going to, and wanted to see if we could abstract this decision-making and scale it for the world.”
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The idea grew partly from Sharma’s own experience moving to Philadelphia from India. Sharma said the information she received about Philadelphia centered on which neighborhoods and streets to avoid, leaving her feeling “quite confined.”
Attending music performances and art events eventually took Sharma farther into the city, where she discovered spaces that made Philadelphia feel more familiar.
“I realized that there are so many South Asian artists, and galleries like Twelve Gates in the Old City, that allow international students to feel at home immediately,” Sharma said.
That experience led Sharma to propose a map documenting Philadelphia’s public art. She eventually decided the concept would be difficult to scale and began brainstorming a digital platform that could personalize exploration.
“For you to be able to make the most out of your time in a city, it has to be a personalized experience,” Sharma said.
Sharma primarily oversees growth and user interface design, while Arora focuses on Disco’s overall strategy, product management, and fundraising as CEO. Arya leads the startup’s technical development.
The three work alongside two interns, although Arora said the size of the team means each founder contributes across different areas of the business.
Building Disco’s Philadelphia database also exposed shortcomings in existing online recommendations. Sharma manually reviewed around 450 locations across the city to determine whether they were still operating. She found that roughly two dozen closed businesses were still being recommended online.
“Our most important asset is our database,” Arora wrote. “Our aim is to be an app that doesn’t miss. No bad recommendations.”
Philadelphia is currently one of Disco’s primary markets alongside New Delhi, but Arora said they view it as a testing ground for a product that could operate globally.
Although the platform remains free to use, the founders expect to introduce subscriptions. Sharma said the company does not plan to sell sponsored recommendations, a decision they discussed from their first day on the job.
“The reason for our displeasure with platforms like Instagram was that there’s more advertised content than genuine recommendations,” Arora wrote. “We know that paid promotions for spots we recommend is not the way to go.”
Instead, the founders are prioritizing user growth before revenue.
Sharma said she wants Disco to become a platform users consult not only while traveling, but when making decisions on how to spend time in their own cities. She envisions users documenting places they visit and sharing recommendations with friends, creating a record of the places that shape their lives.
The startup has plans to launch an app, introduce a subscription model, and expand its personalized city recommendations globally.
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Staff reporter Advita Mundhra covers student life and can be reached at mundhra@thedp.com. At Penn, she studies cognitive science and economics.
