The WIT Bootcamp returns to Singapore on October 19 with its annual competition to find the travel start-up of the year and to put the spotlight on hot spaces in the start-up world.
Entries for the WIT Start-Up Pitch 2015 close next Monday August 31 and thus far, submissions have come in from Malaysia, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan and the UK.
The team from Hong Kong-based Klook pitching at WIT Japan & North Asia this year – they went on to win the competition
Contestants compete to win a place to pitch to the conference participants at the main conference on October 23. Past winners and participants include Trippiece, BeMyGuest, Relux and Voyagin (acquired by Rakuten) who’ve gone on to raise funds and carve niches within the travel industry.
Takaya Shinozuka, co-founder of Relux, the curated marketplace for ryokans, which won at WIT Japan, said, “Relux is growing quite fast and I believe that started since we won the start-up pitch at WIT 2013. It was one of the biggest breaking points of our company.”
Last year’s People’s Choice winner was Thailand-based Local Alike, whose CEO & founder, Somsak (Pai) Boonkam, said, “Pitching at WIT is a big chance to get relevant feedbacks from experts and judges who understand the industry really well and of course it helps improves Local Alike model for the better.”
Winnie Tan, CEO & founder, Singapore-based TripZilla, was one of the pioneer batch which took part in the Pitch in 2010. “WIT Conference is the best stage for travel start-ups who want to get their word out. Take it from me because TripZilla was hatched at WIT Conference 2010! This event offers us the unparalleled opportunity to learn from and interact with the brightest travel leaders. It is a fantastic networking channel and we have been able to use it to start conversations with companies we want to work with.
“But like how a company’s culture is of utmost importance to a startup, WIT’s culture is the secret sauce that makes it so special – the candid sharing of ideas, the willingness of the veterans to mentor and the implicit understanding to come with an open mind.”
In the past decade, investors have poured more than US$12 billion into travel start-ups – and more than half of that funding was raised in 2014 alone.
According to Phocuswright’s Travel Innovation: The State of Startups 2005-2014, which tracks nearly 1,000 travel companies launched worldwide from 2005-2014, massive bets on ground transportation and private accommodation innovators drove a record $6.4 billion in travel start-up investment in 2014.
The biggest success story out of South-east Asia is GrabTaxi which raised a $350 million Series E round from new investors Coatue Management and China Investment Corp. and existing investors SoftBank Capital and Tiger Global Management, bringing the Malaysian start-up’s total funding to more than $680 million.
In private accommodation, the news that CapitaLand is investing in and forming a joint venture with Tujia.com, a Beijing-based start-up, is to be watched. Tujia has reportedly raised a total of $300 million, valuing it at US$1 billion.
The WIT Bootcamp will cover these spaces, as well as tours & activities which has also seen accelerated activity. Voyagin, which made its debut at the WIT Japan Pitch in 2013, was acquired by Rakuten in July. Korea’s MyRealTrip, which won the WIT Japan Pitch in 2014, just this week raised new funding to accelerate its global expansion.
Another hot space to be covered is corporate travel which is beginning to see the start of disruption.
Global business travel spending will hit a record US$1.25 trillion in 2015, 6.5% growth over 2014. Growth will remain strong through 2019, with business travel projected to grow 6.9% in 2016, 6% in 2017, 6.4% in 2018 and 5.8% in 2019, according to the Global Business Travel Association.
And despite recent economic turbulence, China business travel will increase by 61% over the next 5 years, from $261 billion in 2014 to $420 billion in 2019. That increase is greater than the increases in business travel growth in the next 8 largest countries combined, including the U.S., Germany, India, U.K., Indonesia, France, Turkey and Japan.
Enter the WIT Start-Up Pitch here
Register for the WIT Conference which includes the WIT Bootcamp.
