If any of you have been wondering about what I have been up to since leaving Founders Factory, well I’ve been involved in building and running the new airline technology company, Kyte, together with my co-founders Catalin and Will.
Kyte is about one thing and one thing only - helping airlines retail. Kyte’s purpose is to help airlines achieve the original goals of NDC.
If NDC is a new acronym to you.. Let me quickly explain. NDC stands for New Distribution Capability - an initiative introduced by the IATA encouraging airlines to build their own distribution channels and take control over their sales and retail.
Airlines have relied on the same intermediaries to distribute their content since the 1960s which has over time put pressure on costs whilst the delivery has not kept up to date with modern online retail.
The grand vision for NDC was in fact for airlines to reduce costs, have more control over their product and significantly develop the way they put offers in front of consumers as well as drive omni channel retailing to deliver a consistent shopping experience whether you book on an airlines website or via an online travel agency like Expedia.
Whilst conceptually NDC is great, the implementation and roll out haven’t been as effective as the industry hoped and unfortunately that vision of NDC isn’t being realised.
Our mission at Kyte is to help airlines overcome the existing technical barriers and reach that vision.
In the next weeks I will share about these topics in more depth and dive into the power of airline retail and why it’s currently so hard to achieve.