Her third startup focused on domestic and low cost airline content
SOMETIME in 2019, Mary Li was at an exhibition of South-east Asian art at the National Gallery Singapore when she realised that maps depicting the region in the 18th and 19th centuries varied according to the interpretations of the different artists.
“It made me realise that everyone sees the world in a different way and I thought why can’t travellers have their own experience, their own Atlas of travel,” said the travel tech entrepreneur.
Li, however, had a more specific market in mind – low cost and domestic airline content, and enable travellers to buy flights the way, say, a woman shops for clothes. “We buy according to our body size, shape and our tastes,” she said. “Why can’t buying flights be the same way, be as personal, be as easy?”
On September 15 that year she set up The Atlas in Singapore, described as “a global airfare aggregator, offering unique content from low-cost carriers and domestic airlines”.
I know, I can almost hear eyes roll among flight veterans who know how difficult and cumbersome flights is, and them saying, “here comes another startup trying to solve it”.
In Episode 5 of the WiT Travel Roadshow, Mathias Hedlund, CEO of Etraveli Group, when asked, what was the one thing he’d like to fix about flights, said, “I still think that we all should be a bit ashamed that it’s so difficult to book. The whole economics about flights makes us and others create booking paths that are not consumer friendly, to be frank, because if you make them too consumer friendly, you cannot compete on price.”
He further said it’s been interesting to see newcomers come into the industry, thinking they can solve it and then having learned more, realise how complex it is.
Lessons from her early adventures in flights
Li is aware of the scepticism that surrounds her latest startup but she is used to defying critics. The Atlas is her third flight startup. Her first was Wingon Travel in China but her breakthrough came with ASLAN, which she founded in 2005, and grew it from a 40-person offline travel agency into the largest B2B air ticfierket platform in China. In 2014, ASLAN was acquired by Alitrip, now Fliggy, where she stayed for two years heading Fliggy air tickets.
(You can see a common thread coming through in how Li names her companies – Aslan is, of course, the name of the lion in CS Lewis’ “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” tale.)
She then took a two-year break to travel the world. Her path then crossed with Rajeev Kumar, founder of Mystifly, the India-based global flight platform, and she joined the company as co-CEO, based in Bangalore.
That period was the most intense learning time, working in another country, immersed in another culture. “India totally changed me, the people, the religion, the culture,” she said. “When I left, the team gave me so many gifts – gifts that probably cost them more than a month’s salary. I was so moved.”
With The Atlas, she’s assembled a seasoned team of 20 people, who are spread out all over the world. Headquarters is in Singapore, where Li currently resides, while product tech is in Hangzhou, China. There’s a New Zealand entity, with Brian Staunton who oversees marketing and brand strategy.
“We want to be diversified. I am not good at managing a diverse culture background – that’s a lesson from India – so it is good for the team to be separated. The English-speaking team reports to Brian while the Chinese-speaking team reports to me.”
Li has chosen to focus on the low cost and domestic airline content because, according to her, it represents 40% of total flight capacity and is the most fragmented piece of flights. “People need a new air ticketing concept. We want to enable people to buy a ticket according to their needs by offering an end-to-end solution, from data to transaction to settlement,” she said.
In her time at Alitrip she saw how important the payment piece was to e-commerce. “I could see the link between travel and payments, but it wasn’t being addressed. Now we are seeing so much innovation in payments in China and we are tapping into the expertise in this field, to link it to what we are building.”
When she started The Atlas she also thought it would focus on the Asia Pacific region but since working on the product and feeling out the market, it is seeing interest in Europe and the US as well, which is why as far as Li is concerned, she could work from anywhere. “Right now, I am in Singapore but I could run the business from anywhere.”
Li says the pandemic has liberated thinking of entrepreneurs like her. “It’s made us think so differently about how things can be done, how businesses can be built and how consumers will think differently about how they want to buy travel.”
The pandemic has also proven to be the best time to build a flight business. With not much flying happening for most of 2020 and it remaining flat this year, particularly in Asia Pacific, Li and her team have had time building and developing a strong product. Self-funded, it’s also found a major investor this year although Li declined to disclose the identity for now except to say, “it’s a big tech company”.
There’s another art story embedded in The Atlas. Right after she saw the exhibition of South-east Asian art Li read the book “Atlas” by the Argentinian writer, Jorge Luis Borges. “In that book, although he was going blind, he described what he saw in poems and photos. He poured so much love into the book. I want to put that kind of love into the company.”
Note: Mary Li will be speaking at WiT Experience Singapore, October 19-20.
