Getting to know you: Siddika Jaffer, founder, Safari Circle

Siddika Jaffer is the founder of Safari Circle, a travel tech business that matches travellers to African safaris through a personality profiling system it calls Safari DNA.

Incorporated in May 2026, the company says it launched in the UK in September with a three-minute, 12-question quiz that sorts travellers into one of 12 safari archetypes, with recommendations across nine countries in East and Southern Africa.

A sixth-generation Kenyan based in Watford, she spent more than a decade building ventures at McKinsey, BCG Digital Ventures and IAG before starting the company, which she has chosen to bootstrap. She tells Business Matters why safari is still sold like every other holiday, and why she wants travellers to keep going back.

What do you currently do at Safari Circle?

I am the founder, which in the early stages of any business means I do a bit of everything, but the part I care most about is the product itself. I designed Safari DNA, our unique profiling system, from scratch, drawing on everything I know about what actually makes someone fall in love with a place in the wild. The quiz takes about three minutes and places each traveller in one of 12 safari archetypes, from The Conservationist to The Pioneer.

Day to day, that means overseeing how results from the profiling system feed into our matching technology, and working with our network of destination experts to make sure every recommendation is grounded in real, lived experience of the lodges and camps we suggest.

It also means building the partnerships that let us offer genuinely world-class access, including our relationship with 360 Private Travel, a Virtuoso and Forbes Travel Guide endorsed network that opens the door to over 5,000 travel providers globally.

I also spend a lot of time talking to travellers, past, current and aspiring, because the moment I stop listening to how people actually experience the planning process is the moment this business stops solving the right problem.

What was the inspiration behind your business?

I am a sixth-generation Kenyan. Safari has never been a bucket-list trip for me; it is home, and I have been fortunate enough to take dozens of safaris across my lifetime. And yet, even with that depth of personal knowledge, I have booked trips that did not live up to what I was hoping for.

I trusted glowing reviews for a property that turned out to have a poor game-viewing location and an experience that felt more staged than authentic. If someone who has spent her whole life around safari can get it wrong, I knew something structural was broken in how these trips get planned.

I had spent over a decade building ventures at McKinsey, BCG Digital Ventures and IAG, home of British Airways, so I understood how to take an ambiguous, complex problem and build something real around it. Safari is one of the most complex purchases in leisure travel, and yet it is still sold like every other holiday, through generic questions about dates and budget, rather than starting with who the traveller actually is and how they like to travel.

Safari Circle exists to close that gap between inspiration and confident decision-making, and to do it in a way that reflects real personal fit, not just logistics.

At the same time, I find it heartbreaking that people consider a safari to Africa a once in a lifetime trip. The wild places our planet is trying to protect, and the species on the verge of extinction, rely on tourism dollars to fund conservation efforts, not to mention the people whose livelihoods depend on tourism.

My mission is to get people to fall in love with Africa, and keep going back. There are so many places to experience and discover.

Who do you admire?

I admire Ruth Bader Ginsburg for her perseverance through personal adversity and entrenched sexism, and for her lifelong commitment to advancing women’s equality.

She combined courage with long-term vision, recognising that meaningful change is often incremental and that some victories take years, even generations, to achieve.

Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?

I am still at the start of my journey with Safari Circle, and so far the decisions my co-founder and I have made about the direction, purpose and execution seem to be sound. Time will tell.

What defines your way of doing business?

Control and conviction. I chose to bootstrap Safari Circle, not because I could not raise money, but because I wanted to prove the model on my own terms first, particularly at a moment when I am cautious about the hype around AI valuations. That choice means I move a little slower than a venture-backed competitor might, but it also means every decision stays true to what I actually believe in.

I am building an AI-native business, but I never let the technology outrun the trust that this category demands. Safari is a high-stakes, high-trust purchase, and no traveller wants to feel like they are talking to a chatbot when they are planning the trip of a lifetime.

So my approach pairs smart technology with real human expertise at every stage, and I hold that line even when it would be easier to over-automate.

I also care deeply about who I build with. Diversity and inclusion are not an afterthought for me; they shape who I hire, who I partner with, and which destinations and communities I choose to champion.

What advice would you give to someone starting out?

I have coached entrepreneurs for over a decade now. My constant advice is to find a problem you really care about. When you are starting out, the excitement of the wins and seeing your vision come to life buoys you.

When that initial novelty wears off and you are having to struggle with tough decisions, or you realise you are plateauing, you need to draw on your commitment to solving the problem.

The second is to talk to everyone in the space you want to occupy. Protecting your idea is a fallacy. You need to learn rapidly where the failure points are, and the fastest way to do that is to speak to everyone you can in the space and understand the patterns.

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