In the airline industry, where countless distributors compete for passenger bookings, a robust and efficient distribution system is essential. The Global Distribution Systems (GDS) that underpin airline distribution, face their own set of infrastructure challenges and costly distribution fees in the complex web of airline ticketing. GDS are old school and haven’t evolved with time, but airlines and distributors are often left with no choice but to work with these archaic and expensive systems.

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In fact, the industry has often been plagued by singular focus on cost optimization and barely any focus on customer experience, retention, and therefore revenue maximization. With ever evolving consumer preferences and needs, GDSs’ are struggling to keep pace and provide a new-age experience. From limited flexibility in content customization to outdated data updates, airlines face hurdles in delivering seamless, personalized travel experiences to customers.

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This is where Mystifly, a new-age, tech-enabled GDS, is transforming the airline distribution industry and helping airlines and distributors offer the end customers a contemporary tech-driven experience, leading to better revenue realization for all stakeholders in the value-chain.

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Mystifly is a travel SaaS company that offers a powerful API-first platform for accessing real-time global airline data and content. With its comprehensive, modular API stack, it empowers any digital business to effortlessly sell airline tickets and  and offer travel as a vertical to their captive customer base. It operates as an embedded marketplace that aggregates airlines and other ancillary service providers on the supply side and provides an API-based access to this supply in real-time to digital businesses that are looking to offer travel solutions to their end customers.

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Mystifly provides a value-addition for both - airlines and OTAs (Online Travel Aggregator), providing them  real-time connectivity, enhanced personalization capabilities, and ultimately, an unrivalled passenger experience. It helps the OTAs in significantly improving the revenue by providing them access to inventory from multiple airlines in one go, ability to provide value-added service to passengers and ability to price these dynamically. It helps airlines to improve its reach and reduce the cost of distribution, provide real-time reconciliation and improve the booking-to-cash efficiency.

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Mystifly was founded in 2014 by Rajeev, who comes with complex product build experiencefor multiple industries. He was later joined by Bharat, who brings many years of experience in building enterprise grade financial products.

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Our thesis for investment in Mystifly can be summarised as:

1. Scalable solution for a complex industry that desperately needs modernization – Mystifly simplifies the distribution of retail ticketing for airlines, global and local OTAs (Online Travel Aggregator). With a transformative tech solution, Mystifly has made it easy for the players in the industry to access global inventory. With the current GDS, that offer standardized content, Mystifly is able to provide very flexible and customized offerings making it a scalable solution across the industry

2.  Pioneer in Transforming the travel industry – While we have seen Technology transform industries like BFSI, Healthcare, Retail; Travel has actually gone back a few years, with no hint of personalisation. Mystifly’s Single Order is able to attribute each value added service purchased by the passenger, and offer comprehensive ticket for his future purchases. In our estimate the total addressable market that Mystify is able to target is $2 billion and it can easily capture $200 million+ in terms of revenue from this opportunity

3.  Bringing cost efficiencies across the board for all stakeholders – Mystifly’s solution is not only flexible but also cost efficient. Where traditional GDSs are charging 10% to 12% as distribution fees, Mystifly is able to offer its suite at a fee of mere 2%. With it’s payments offering, Mysti-Pay, Mystifly, is able to unlock 100’s of millions in working capital for airlines, making it’s solution suite indispensable for airlines!

4.  Unmatched Value Chain Control – Through it’s modular approach, Mystifly is able to embed itself in various stages of the same transaction. For ‘a single purchased ticket’ Mystifly has modules for distribution, value added purchases / retail personalisation, cancellation and changes of the same ticket, reconciliation and settlement between distributor and airline. Thus making it a powerhouse for the airline travel distribution industry

Having survived and built some of these attributes through the Pandemic (darkest for the travel industry), this is truly an anti-fragile business. Rajeev Kumar, (Founder) has plans to take this higher and truly taken on the global opportunity. We’re excited to support the team in building the platform and in enabling the hyper-scaling of this unique opportunity!

~ Nanika

Learn more about: CSVP Fund | CGES Index | Enterprise SaaS

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