Singapore Airlines, in collaboration with NUS Enterprise, is on the hunt for the biggest breakthroughs in travel technology with this year’s SIA AppChallenge. The deadline for entries is August 23.
In its fifth year, the hackathon will invite startups and university students to address six pain points faced by the national airline and come up with innovative, tech-focused solutions.
This year’s pain points span customer experience (on-ground, lounge and in-flight), the travel ecosystem (KrisShop), engineering (aircraft maintenance) and sustainability (resource management).
The solutions presented will be assessed by a panel of judges comprised of business managers and those familiar with handling the proposed pain points.
The formal criteria includes:
- Innovation & Creativity
- Business Value
- Technical competency
- Operational Feasibility & Scalability
- User Experience
Contestants in the Startup & Innovators category stand to win the grand prize of S$12,000. The Student category champion will receive a return airfare to San Francisco, accommodation and a tour of Silicon Valley. Both groups also stand a chance of being selected to join the SIA Accelerator Programme to continue developing their solutions with funding of up to S$150,000 each.
Those entering the accelerator programme will experience “building a real solution, proof of concept, and experience working in operations with customers,” said Jerome Thil, VP Digital Innovation, Singapore Airlines. “Beyond the prizes, there is a bigger incentive – they can become a partner to Singapore Airlines.
“The acceleration programme is a joint initiative with NUS Enterprise, who offer startup mentorship – for example, they can learn to build a business plan. SIA will have mentors for the business… to help make sure what [startups] are building will actually be operational.
“It’s only when they hit the market that they will realise if their idea will work in the real world… we have SIA expertise to guide them correctly.”
The AppChallenge is one of the initiatives from the airline seeking to build its relationships and networks with startups from all around the world.
“Startups have a very different culture and mindset…. You have to be very patient and progressive in how you get your business to work with them,” explained Thil. “[This] is the first step in engaging with [them].”
The competition went global last year with over 1,500 participants from 73 countries. It plans to exceed those numbers this year.
RFTrack and Team Winging It were the champions of the 2018 edition for the open and student categories respectively, and were invited into the accelerator programme. However, another finalist – F5shift – was the only graduate. F5shift addresses the problem of food wastage on flights, developing an end-to-end solution to help airlines understand inflight consumption patterns and optimise meal plans accordingly.
SIA is currently in the process of implementing the solution into its processes and testing it in its catering services. It is contributing to the airline’s general ambition to become more eco-friendly, while reducing costs at the same time.
The SIA AppChallenge is part of the group’s broader Digital Innovation Blueprint. In January this year, it launched KrisLab to encourage its employees to submit proposals and develop ideas that could fundamentally improve the business.
“KrisLab is a platform that connects internal business units’ problem statements or staff ideas with the larger tech communities,” said Thil.
Deadline: August 23. The Finals will be held on October 18.
