Making it a tad simpler for air travellers to navigate through the rather tedious procedure of taking a flight, Airwhizz is weaving every single nuance thread by thread and presenting it to customers in their favourite format — an app. Conceptualised in 2015, the development of the app took over one-and-a-half years, and was officially launched on June 1, 2017.
In an interaction with DH, Airwhizz co-founder Rishabh Beria says, “With flight tickets becoming more affordable and the number of air travellers increasing by the day, there are many first time travellers, and also travellers visiting different cities and their airports for the first time. While all this can be a little overwhelming, Airwhizz is a one-stop destination for all requirements, right from determining what time to leave home to make it in time to the airport for check-in.”
The Android-first platform is also available on iOS and claims cumulative installs at 4.5 lakh. “In terms of customers, our focus is domestic travellers and international travellers from India, although the platform hosts information for all airports across the globe, and is open to a global user-base,” he says.
“The ultimate aim of the app is to make air travel hassle-free with all relevant information at the user’s finger tip. The beauty of the app is that the user has to first enter flight details to navigate through different portals, such as restaurants, shops, spas, cabs, etc, so that the information received is relevant,” he adds.
At present, Airwhizz is recording a 30-40 active users on a daily basis, and hopes to take the number to 500 by the end of this fiscal. The bootstrapped company has made an investment of Rs 1.3 crore till date and plans to raise its seed round of Rs 3.2 crore, soon.
On generating revenues, Beria says, “While we have generated some revenue through ancillary development with the airports, we are looking to create a user base before monetising the app. We will be mildly monetising the app in 2017-18, and are expecting a revenue of Rs 16 lakh. In 2018-19, we are projecting a revenue of Rs 64 lakh, which should grow then on.”
As of now, the app is focused on business travellers as the section of its clientele forms the bigger portion of its user-base, but is also bringing in more features for the leisure traveller. While phase I for Airwhizz is all about creating and expanding user-base, phase II will be about introducing new features.
“We plan to introduce loyalty programmes in partnership with businesses at airports, online booking for meals, online shopping with at duty-free shops, data on duty-free prices across airports, etc,” he concludes. While the company does not intend to enter the ticketing space any time in the near future, it has already started making inroads in the accomodation booking space by partnering with some players in the space.
Airwhizz also plans to increase the size of its team as operations expand. Currently, the team stands six-strong, and sits out of Bengaluru.
Published 18 June 2017, 16:40 IST