Soaring to the top of this year’s startup leader board, Cape – a social travel app to reserve standby air tickets – was marked as the victors of this year’s WIT Startup Pitch Grand Final 2016.
The mobile app facilitates flight bookings, exclusively dealing in standby tickets for price-sensitive last minute travellers seeking “ultra affordable fares”, up to seven days before their intended travel date.
Far from a simple ticket purchase app, Cape allows travellers to continually monitor the likelihood of securing a ticket in real time, only paying when they are confirmed to fly. Cape also features a unique bidding system wherein users can up the price they are willing to pay on popular flights to increase their likelihood of travel.
Finally, Cape has also incorporated a social element wherein users can share their travel itineraries with family and friends and even obtain group discounts should they travel together.
While a great idea for budget or leisure travellers, Cape also presented a big opportunity for flight carriers. It is estimated that $85b in revenue is lost when flights depart at 80% capacity. Cape would therefore allow airlines to generate incremental revenue out of last minute available space.
Airlines would also given flexible controls on when standby tickets can be released on Cape via a factor-loaded search e.g. tickets only sold when capacity is less than a pre-determined percentage.
Cape’s business model has been kept relatively simple, by introducing a markup on exclusive fares directly from the airlines. They will earn a percentage split from the revenue generated from Cape bookings.
The app intends to go live in the first quarter of 2017. So far, the founding team have partnered with two airlines – one in North American and one in South East Asia – with plans to expand to other airlines by Q3.
As champions of this year’s WIT Startup Pitch Grand Final, Cape earned a place in the Travelport Labs Accelerator programme, which comes with seed funding of US$30,000. They also won USD120k of cloud credits from IBM.
Cape beat out two other worthy finalists, Sports Where I Am (an online platform targeting avid sports fans keen on discovering and seeking travel advice around local sporting events) and Backstreet Academy (a P2P activities marketplace cum social enterprise, supporting local hosts, translating bookings to local languages and sending information to feature phones for hosts without smartphones).
Backstreet Academy then went on to win the People’s Choice Award!
