Emerging Entrepreneurs from Annual SIA AppChallenge
Now into its 7th edition, the SIA AppChallenge is a joint partnership between Singapore Airlines and NUS Enterprise to source innovative solutions for the travel and aviation industry. This year, the event received more than 600 submissions across its Student and Startup Tracks.
SIA AppChallenge Student Track
The Student Track included three challenge themes: “Future of In-Flight Gaming,” “Future of Work” as well as “Future of On-Ground Travel Experience.” Teams were encouraged to sign up for the event and pitch their ideas in line to any of these three categories.
From the initial 50 teams who submitted, eight were selected to receive committed guidance from NUS Enterprise and SIA mentors over a one-week period, helping them to refine and build on their solutions.
During the grand finale on 12 September, teams were given 10 minutes to pitch and answer questions, from which six teams surfaced as the top three and superlative award winners.
1st — KrisAdventures
2nd — Pelago Infinity
3rd — P³
Dare to Imagine Award — FightorFlight
The Pitch Gurus Award — Team Jenkins
Human-Centred Design Award — First Class
Amongst the six teams, we would like to especially highlight the success of KrisAdventures, Team Jenkins and FightorFlight, as they comprise our very own students from NUS!
The innovative solution developed by 1st Prize team KrisAdventures is geared towards flight miles and in-flight gaming. Their main idea was to allow passengers to enjoy a plethora of mini games on flight while personalising their own KrisPet that will follow them throughout the entire journey. This idea was indeed a first and it managed to successfully capture the attention of the senior management in SIA.
SIA AppChallenge Startup Track
The Startup Track attracted 588 submissions from 64 countries. It consisted of nine challenge statements from four categories: “Seamless Travel Experience,” “People and Operations,” “Sustainability,” and lastly a wildcard challenge statement which allowed teams to submit other innovative ideas.
The 11 October finale consisted of eight teams from various countries and backgrounds proposing a wide range of innovative and game-changing ideas for Singapore Airlines. After four hours of intense pitching and scrutiny from the judges, Blings.io, a start-up from Israel, emerged as winner of the SIA AppChallenge Startup Track 2021.
“We feel extremely elated to be given this opportunity for our idea to be recognised by the judges of the SIA AppChallenge! We are currently working towards a POC with SIA and would like to thank the judges for believing in us, and for choosing Blings as first place winners in the 2021 AppChallenge. We encourage future teams to be confident and to give it your best shot during future SIA AppChallenges!”
Blings.io’s proposal was focused on in-flight entertainment using their next-generation video technology that allows passengers to view personalised information through videos which can be played on the in-flight screen. Passengers can interact with the video through various call-to-action (CTA) buttons that are dynamically displayed, based on internal data and business logics. Each CTA will lead the passenger to specific shopping pages/ movie and gaming platforms/ relaxation exercises, or any other automatically tailor-made journeys that’s created on the flight. The unique Blings.io format, weighing only 100kb, is fully interactive and allows the data to be transmitted and stored on SIA servers, without exposing any information to a third party.
