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Dubai: Intelak, an industry-focused incubator programme for the aviation, travel and tourism sectors, has selected four winning start-ups from its latest cohort. Led by principal partners the Emirates Group and Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (Dubai Tourism), the programme is committed to supporting promising start-ups in the industry to launch, scale and grow their concepts, underlining its support of the UAE’s vision to establish itself as a global hub for entrepreneurship.
10 start-ups were shortlisted from over 100 applicants from 20 countries to attend a weeklong pre-incubation boot camp in February following which, the four finalists were selected by an esteemed jury of industry experts, including Yousuf Lootah, Executive Director, Tourism Development & Investments, Dubai Tourism; Alex Alexander, Group Chief Technology Officer at the Emirates Group; and Hans Henrik Christensen, VP of Dubai Technology Entrepreneur Campus.
The winning start-ups are Sherpa, Troop Travel, Mobimatter and Seafood Souq, with each business idea focused on making customers’ travel journey more seamless and sustainable. Throughout the programme’s four-month incubation period the start-ups will have unrivalled access to Intelak’s corporate partners, industry investors and world-class mentoring from travel and tourism experts to grow their businesses. Their journey will conclude on 24 June 2020 with a Demo Day in which the start-ups pitch their ideas to the programme’s principle partners, leading industry experts and investors for partnership and funding opportunities.
Sherpa, a start-up from Canada presented a proposal on improving touchpoints in the passenger journey with the shift from paper visas to electronic visas, with the aim to improve the overall experience by allowing passengers to reserve their electronic visas directly through flight booking platforms.
Troop Travel, originating from Spain, focuses on utilising big data to help travel and event managers take informed decisions when planning and booking any type of corporate group travel, meetings and events. Their technology will help large corporations identify cost savings, reduce time for planning and increase accountability and eventually launch a series of offerings in Dubai for corporate events.
The third start-up, MobiMatter, established in the UAE enables airlines, travel agents, event organisers, and other travel players to sell and provision mobile packages to their customers digitally.
Lastly, Seafood Souq also based in the UAE is a digital marketplace solution providing full supply chain traceability from source with a focus on sustainability, tasked to build an online platform to source local sustainable food products for hotels in the UAE and eventually expand across the GCC.
Founded in 2016, Intelak brings together entrepreneurs and early stage start-ups from across the UAE and internationally to participate in an aviation, travel, and tourism-focused incubator programme. Meaning ‘taking off’ in Arabic, the programme has provided over AED 1.4 million in seed funding and AED 1.2 million in resources to date, without taking an equity stake in the companies.
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About Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (Dubai Tourism)
With the ultimate vision of positioning Dubai as the world’s leading tourism destination and commercial hub, Dubai Tourism’s mission is to increase the awareness of Dubai among global audiences and to attract tourists and inward investment into the emirate. Dubai Tourism is the principal authority for the planning, supervision, development and marketing of Dubai’s tourism sector. It markets and promotes the Emirate’s commerce sector and is responsible for the licensing and classification of all tourism services, including hotels, tour operators and travel agents. Brands and departments within the Dubai Tourism portfolio include Dubai Business Events, Dubai Calendar, and Dubai Festivals and Retail Establishment.
For further information, please contact:
Dubai Tourism
mediarelations@dubaitourism.ae
[+971] 600 55 5559
[+971] 4 201 7631
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