Spotnana CTO aims to disrupt by tackling fragmented industry with Travel-as-a-Service
You've probably heard of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), but Travel-as-a-Service is a term originally coined by Spotnana. Spotnana is a service provider that combines “a travel management company that is an online booking tool provider”. (TMC), a content aggregator and technology provider.
The company introduced Travel-as-a-Service, aiming to modernize the travel industry's infrastructure by providing a cloud-based platform with open APIs. For businesses, Spotnana provides an integrated platform for travel management, offering integrations with preferred vendors and analytics tools. For TMC, Spotnana's platform enables collaboration between agents and travelers, and by leveraging Spotnana's technology stack, TMC can reduce costs and focus on the traveler experience.
Shikhar Agarwal, Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Spotnanasay The main problem here is collecting data from multiple sources. In one of his blog posts, he wrote:By collecting content in real-time from a vast number of sources, aggregating, deduplicating, normalizing, sorting, filtering, and marking up all inventory with customer-specific business rules that are considered both inside and outside of policy. comparable to the complexity of the world. The largest e-commerce platform.
WiT recently caught up with Shikhar to talk about: We advocate for the complexity of industry entry due to required licenses and regulations, Spotnana's solution to democratize travel through a platform approach, the potential for industry disruption, and collaborative innovation.
Q: What is the purpose of Travel-as-a-Service and what gap in the market does it solve?
I come from a non-traveling background. Prior to this, he worked at Google and ThoughtSpot. So what I realized when I started learning about corporate travel is that the biggest barrier to separation everywhere, segmentation everywhere is data. There is no single location where all data is shared.
It became clear that in order to innovate in this space, we had to connect all of our data together. And you need to own a system of travel records and profiles. And there were many hurdles to entry. It's amazing that he has to get ARC, IATA and BSP to understand all this.
So how can we make innovation easier in such a closed industry? Democratize travel and allow everyone to innovate on it. And we didn't want to solve this problem just with corporate travel. We thought we needed to create a platform so that others didn't have to worry about anything except focus on their business and not have to worry about the complexities of obtaining a license. Whether you want to go B2C, want to travel in groups, or want to connect your traveler data to OpenTable for restaurant reservations…the travel platform that democratizes travel will help you innovate. The range will be infinite.
Our platform is inspired by AWS and how Amazon uses the same platform for e-commerce. Similarly, we have developed a travel platform that we call Travel-as-a-Service (TaaS). Spotnana uses his TaaS platform and both are independent but under the same company. We want people to use our platform through API white label solutions. In that sense, we are the first customers of our own platform.
Q: You basically went out to solve problems that you were personally facing in your business…
that's right. If you want to offer credit card payments on your website, go to Stripe. You don't have to worry about how to connect your MasterCard or American Express, or how your Bank of America credit card sends money to Chase customers. Everything is handled by Stripe. Therefore, payment has become very easy. And that led to further innovation. We wanted it for traveling and entertaining.
We also have customers like CWT who want to have their own BCC and do their own invoicing, and our platform can support that. So you can either do as little or as little as possible.
Q: We built this platform from the bottom up. What does that experience mean in terms of understanding the platform's technology ecosystem?
We take a platform-first approach. It takes years of hard work and a lot of faith. It takes time, money, and people. It always depends on these three factors. If you have a lot of money, you can hire a lot of people and save time. So it's kind of interrelated.
We were fortunate enough to have the backing of some great investors who believed in our vision even though we did this during the pandemic and people were saying there was zero travel. I believed in the vision.
We've been able to hire amazing engineers from both the travel and non-travel industries. And we have established a solid foundation over time. It's like growing bamboo, right? It takes some time to reach a certain height, but then it expands rapidly. So if you do it slowly but surely, it will be easier to scale quickly.
Q: Is disruption the ultimate goal for Spotnana at this point?
Yes, destruction is the ultimate goal. But disruption requires context, right? We want to move the industry forward. That's why we have this platform that's not tied to just us. It's an open platform. This is a disruption in the technology space, I don't deny that. But we want everyone to start leveraging this technology and see how they can leverage it to drive their business forward.
Q: There's also a lot of activity in the corporate travel space, including AMEX's acquisition of CWT for $570 million…
In fact, CWT uses Spotnana as a technology platform for many Fortune 500 companies, and we are very excited to have CWT join the AMEX team. And I think consolidation will make the industry even stronger. I don't know yet how it will affect us, but I would like to congratulate both companies on this merger.
Q: What are some glaring gaps in corporate travel that you would like to fix but can't because the technology isn't available yet?
I don't see anyone focusing on the productivity of their agents or customer agents, so how can we make them more productive? How do we save their time? We frequently use agents for everything from adding and PSAP numbers to adding vegetarian to expanding and matching hotel room images.
We're piecing all of this together in an AI-first way to create a unique agent desktop that we think will be very unique in the industry in a platform-like way that other companies and call centers can also use. Similarly, if an earthquake were to occur and flights were suddenly canceled, there would be a huge gap in response to the disruption. For example, let's say 100 people are affected. Everything is pretty manual now, so how do you manage it? So how can you self-service in the way that all of our Agent Desktop Interruption Management products do in an AI-first way?
I think the technology exists now, but you have to train your own LLM, which takes a lot of energy and time, and sometimes goes beyond the budget for a startup. We don't have enough money to actually train.
It also provides more control to suppliers. I think that's really important, right? Airlines want to offer dynamic pricing, and they also want to offer ancillary services like Wi-Fi and lounge passes. This is a huge market. So again, how does all this data come together? I think it also improves the traveler's experience. This technology doesn't exist yet because the entire charging is still on the legacy stack. If you want to change something, it requires a lot of work and process. Airlines now realize that ancillary business and general upselling is a huge industry. They also need to strengthen their technical staff and streamline data movement.
Spotnana CTO and Founder Shikhar Agarwal (left) and CEO and Founder Sarosh Waghmar
Q: When do you think technology will get there?
I think the technology is there. It is more important to introduce technology. For example, one of Spotnana's core services is NDC. We rely heavily. There's so much fragmentation that we're trying to unify the content by connecting all the airlines. NDC allows airlines to innovate in-house without relying on numerous third-party systems. And we are NDC first.
With NDC, airlines can start selling all their accessories as part of their upsell opportunities, as NDC connects travelers and airlines directly.
Therefore, it is important now to leverage, adopt and apply technology. And we're on the front lines. If we are a platform, we need to stay ahead of the curve. When NDC started offering WiFi purchasing functionality, it was available on the platform.
Q: You basically coined the term Travel-as-a-Service, so you operate in a unique space. Who are your competitors? Do you think more players will enter this space?
There are certainly a lot of people in this space. I think it's a bit fragmented when it comes to platforms. For example, Booking.com has a great hotel API. Skyscanner has a great flight API. This means that an API is available to retrieve the content.
However, companies are limited if they want to customize these APIs to suit their needs. If you want to get negotiated rates with the API, you can't get them with the OTA API. That's why we're even trying to partner with all these OTAs to allow them to serve content through us. We become the platform. Connect just like you would connect to Expedia. We will be the central platform and unify the industry, at least on the platform side.
Q: There is a belief that artificial intelligence, generative AI, and new technologies are mostly available to large companies due to cost, and less available to startups and new companies. Do you think it's true?
AI has two parts. One is data and access to data. The second step is training the model. Training is expensive – GPUs are very expensive. But with ChatGPT and Gemini and Mistral, you don't even need to train anymore. So data is everything now, and startups need to figure out how to get that data. Startups have less capital, so they have to do more with less data, and even with less data, they have to do more with less and solve industry problems from there. not.
Accessibility after ChatGPT. No need to train the model. Ready to start leveraging APIs? The primary resource shortage is about talent, not technology.
Q: Lastly, let me ask you a personal question. When did you start becoming a technology enthusiast, and since you don't have a travel background, when did you decide to apply that technology affinity to travel?
I grew up in India. It may seem cheesy, but when my parents gave me my first computer, I was just fascinated by the different colors of the Microsoft logo. What I realized is that thanks to computers and technology, individuals can make big changes without having to have a lot of capital.
Most businesses are capital intensive. But if you own a laptop and have an idea, you can actually do something with it. You can create apps. And maybe some money will come in too.
Of course, everything requires some capital, but you don't need capital upfront. With a computer, you can do things yourself. For me, that was a very strong motivation to try to make an impact. In the last few years before joining Spotnana, I also learned that technology is a means, not an end, in this market. If you're just developing technology to solve a problem, people may not adopt it. Yes, you need to solve someone's problem, but you also need the business side.
So when I met Sarosh, Waghmar (Spotnana CEO and Founder), it turns out that travel is a big enough problem that can be solved with technology that can have a huge, zero-to-one impact, including a disruptive impact. That was my motivation. I'm definitely into technology, but I'm very business-first. Travel is a vast field ripe for disruption. It's time for a trillion-dollar mega-industry.
