Arun Verma (pictured left), head of technology and innovation, at AirAsia Group said this goal of encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship is in line with founder Tony Fernandes’ vision.
“Tony (Fernandes) believes in finding entrepreneurs who are really committed and giving them a good opportunity.
“Our mission is to help nurture the start-up community and give them a platform to test out their ideas with its customers. If the idea works for them, it works for us too. This is why we created TuneLabs, which gives start-ups a bridge between their product and the market,” said Arun.
Said Yeoh Siew Hoon (pictured below right), editor and founder of WIT, “This so fits in with what we are doing with WIT and our Bootcamp. With advances in technology and changes in customer behaviour, the travel space needs new ideas and our Start-Up Pitch is about surfacing those ideas and giving them a chance to work by matching them with the right knowledge and networks.
“Having a chance to test their ideas with AirAsia’s large customer base is a dream come true for many travel entrepreneurs. They can find out very quickly if their idea works and what needs adjusting – saves a lot of time and pain on everyone’s part.
“With a start-up, customer acquisition is one of the hardest things to do – so this opportunity to plug into AirAsia’s “test lab” is priceless.”
Nine start-ups – representing a diverse spread of entrepreneurs from Europe to the US, China, India, Japan, Indonesia and Singapore – will pitch their ideas to a panel of investors and mentors at the WIT Bootcamp on October 15, which kicks off the annual WIT Conference held in Singapore, Oct 16-17.
All will have the opportunity to leverage this partnership with AirAsia’s TuneLabs.
Going forward, travel start-ups keen to test their ideas with AirAsia TuneLabs can come through WIT which will act as a vetting and matching service.
Said Arun, “We are pleased to work with WIT to open up our “lab” to travel start-ups and look forward to hearing the ideas that will be presented at the WIT Bootcamp.”
Arun, who is speaking at the Bootcamp and Conference, said so far three companies have plugged into the AirAsia “lab”. Flocations, the graphical travel search site, provided a budget search map for the airline. “We learnt a lot and so did they,” said Arun.
Another is Language City which is a way for people to learn English in an interactive, immersive experience. Currently in beta and available for London, the site is aimed at a younger audience who want to learn different languages.
Angry Birds is the third partnership where AirAsia wanted to answer the question, is there an appetite for digital goods and do we have the same customers.
Thus far, the partnership is working well, generating cross-traffic for both and the answer is yes, people have an appetite for digital goods and yes, there is an appetite for digital goods.
Another way that Arun is encouraging innovation within the airline is through an internal crowd sourcing platform called AirAsia Brain where staff submit ideas, and people vote for them and the best ones bubble to the top.
“What’s good is we get new ideas and also focus on old ideas.”
