Seven travel tech startups are in the running in the WIT Startup Pitch competition to win a place in the Travelport Labs Accelerator programme, which comes with seed funding of US$30,000, as well as US$120,000 of cloud credits on IBM Cloud, under the IBM Global Entrepreneur Program.
The semi-finals will be held at Asia’s largest travel startup event, the WIT Bootcamp, in Singapore on October 17. Three will go on to compete for the top prize in the Grand Finals on October 19 at the WIT Conference.
The startups – Backstreet Academy, Cape, Caption, HelloHere, Sports Where I Am, Trazy, and Zumata – represent entries from Singapore, Taiwan, Australia, Poland and the Philippines.
“We received a record number of entries and it was the most diverse in terms of geography and also in business models,” said Yeoh Siew Hoon, founder, WIT. “It’s a sign of the continuing maturity of the travel startup ecosystem in Asia.”
Full house at the WIT Bootcamp in Tokyo this year which also featured a travel tech startup competition.
Jason Nash, global vice president of marketing and product incubation, Travelport, which is powering this year’s WIT Startup Pitch, said he was impressed by the fresh thinking and innovative ideas generated by the shortlisted entries. “I’m really excited to be part of the judging process and to know that one of these super creative start-ups will join our Accelerator program and have a unique opportunity to bring their business to life.”
The WIT Bootcamp was launched eight years ago as a side event to the main WIT Conference to create a marketplace for startups to be heard and coached as well as connected with investors, other entrepreneurs and travel industry players. It has also been launched in WIT Japan & North Asia as well as WIT Indonesia.
Since then, it has grown to become the largest startup event for the travel vertical, attracting nearly 300 delegates last year.
The travel vertical is seeing growing interest from investors. CB Insights, in this article, noted that this year, travel tech startups have raised over $2.5b across 198 deals, and an increasing number of those deals are moving overseas. In keeping with this, we’re also seeing that top investors in travel tech are becoming a more cosmopolitan crowd. (See infographic below)
According to Phocuswright, between 2005 and 2009, 25% of global travel tech startup funding went to startups in APAC; in 2015, it was 51%.
The IBM Global Entrepreneur programme helps startups grow their businesses by giving them access to IBM’s enterprise clients, business mentors, and to meet with technical resources that help startups to design and scale their businesses. The IBM Cloud prize is a year of free cloud credits that startups can use on infrastructure and for building applications with services like Watson.
This year’s WIT Bootcamp is expected to be the largest yet and will feature a series of Founder’s stories as experienced entrepreneurs share lessons learnt on the road to success and new startups flex their wings to growth. Corporations are also taking a bigger interest in startup activities given the urgent need for transformation and innovation within. The event is also expected to see a big turnout of investors looking for the next travel deals. For the first time, a WIT Startup Showcase featuring the best of travel startups will also be staged alongside the Bootcamp.
Full Bootcamp programme here. Sign up for Asia’s largest travel startup event here.
