The travel and tourism industry is one of the world’s largest, so it’s inevitable that many startups want to be a part of it. In Singapore, many travel startups have gotten quite a bit of attention too.
But not for one particular company, which had been quietly working the ground for the past few months. Now, however, it seems poised for Primetime.
The Singapore-based startup is ranked 63rd in the country on Alexa – closely behind Agoda and ahead of eBay and Tripadvisor. Its global Alexa ranking of around 20,000 places it in the region of Hipmunk, a highly-touted Silicon Valley travel site.
In additon, it has a partnership with the Taiwan tourism board, secured a seed funding of S$2.2M (US$1.75M) from Lunar Asia Investment, and hired a 15-strong team.
I’m talking about Qiito (pronounced key-tow). What started as a simple product review for me soon grew into an in-depth interview. For those curious about the company, here are some insights from the company’s founder and CEO, Pei-Han Chuang.
There are so many online travel startups around that it’s sometimes hard to differentiate them from one another.
The latest to enter this space is Trafflers, which is founded by a group of Dutch geeks: Koh San Ngai, Kenneth Touw, Gherry Harahap, and Giovanni Martina. Trafflers is essentially an online group travel planner that aims to make the process more fun and intelligent. They are currently incubatees at the JFDI-Innov8 2012 Bootcamp.
The secret sauce that sets them apart from other startups like Hipmunk and Wanderfly is the end result of the founders’ Natural Language Processing backgrounds. Essentially, Trafflers can analyze the interactions between travel buddies who are using the app and then make recommendations based on the conversations and behavior. Read more
5 days before the upcoming JFDI demo day for the JFDI-Innov8 bootcamp 2012, the mentors for the program were invited to hear the pitches from the 11 companies. All the companies have emerged from a tough and grueling hundred days where they had to make difficult decisions for their start-ups. They have come a long way and here are the interesting companies you should take a look at. Read more
5 days before the upcoming 
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