Amadeus umbrellas yet another start-up named Crayon Data, Asia’s fastest growing big data companies under their travel technology start-up community, Amadeus Next. Amadeus Next, the community was created to mentor, nurture and partner with start-ups, and to evolve new and original ideas in travel, and support go-to-market efforts.
Amadeus is a leading provider of advanced technology solutions for the global travel industry. Customer groups include travel providers (e.g. airlines, hotels, rail and ferry operators, etc.), travel sellers (travel agencies and websites), and travel buyers (corporations and travel management companies).
Crayon, with its growing presence in various geographies, will benefit from Amadeus’ global reach allowing Crayon Data to expand its services to a global audience. The travel industry is changing rapidly, enormously and fundamentally. Digital channels are the primary source of inspiration and planning, and remain a critical part of the entire journey. Personalisation now means profit.
Based in Singapore, Crayon Data is a big data start-up where its flagship product Maya is a personalization engine that facilitates choice delivery for the banking, hotel and digital media verticals.
Maya is built on Crayon Data’s proprietary platform, Simpler Choices, which empowers enterprises with the ability to deliver ultra-personalized choices to their consumers. It does this by creating a consumer taste fabric, using over 14 recommender systems and proprietary cognitive thinking TasteGraph algorithms to work on vast internal and external data sets.
Speaking on the partnership with Amadeus Next, Srikant Sastri, co-founder of Crayon Data, said, “Crayon Data is thrilled to be part of Amadeus Next. We look forward to working with Amadeus and benefiting from its vast knowledge base, eco-system and reach within the travel and hospitality industry, to develop cutting edge solutions and take them to market. This will change the future landscape of travel.”
With Crayon’s Maya, hotels and OTAs now have an opportunity to build trail-blazing, mobile first, curated travel experiences that can deliver personalised itineraries, from choice-to-commerce. Maya personalises engagement right through a customer’s ‘decision-making journey’. Crayon’s unique proposition has resulted in multiple clients across international markets, in the past year alone.
Speaking on Crayon’s innovations, Bart Bellers, Senior Advisor, Corporate Strategy at, Amadeus Asia Pacific, said, “What we like about Crayon Data is that they’re solving personalisation at the other end of the spectrum. Instead of trying to map a traveller’s personality, Crayon Data brings meaningful insights to travellers about the atmosphere of hotels and restaurants by building taste graphs of each and every property. Amadeus Next is very excited to have them on board and we look forward to supporting their growth with Amadeus’ technology, expertise and customer reach.”
Crayon, a portfolio company of Jungle Ventures, has been accredited as one of the most successful and innovative big data start-ups in 2014 and 2015, by global platforms such as TiEcon, CEBIT, IBM Watson, Intech50 and OrangeFab. Other travel technology start-ups on board Amadeus Next include Booking Boss, Klook, Orahi, Triposo, TopDocs, TripVerse, TakeMe Tour, Seatfrog, ConfirmTkt,TraveLibro, Tripoto StayAngel, dozo!, TripHobo and PredictHQ.
We recently got a chance to catch up with Simon Akeroyd, VP, Corporate Strategy and Business Development, Amadeus Asia Pacific during Phocuswright India to learn more about Amadeus Next. You can find the interview story here.
