A stand-alone strategic investment fund is being created to support companies in developing solutions using Iata’s New Distribution Capability (NDC) standard.
IATA has partnered with travel-focused investment Travel Capitalist Ventures to create the NDC Innovation Fund.
It will make investments in small- and medium-sized companies seeking to develop solutions which support airlines and agents as they make use of the enhanced distribution capabilities enabled by the NDC standard.
NDC is a travel industry-supported program launched by IATA for the development and market adoption of a new XML-based data transmission standard.
Tony Tyler, Director General and CEO of IATA:
“The NDC Standard will modernize the way that airline products are presented through travel agents. It will help to promote efficiency and innovation, while supporting consumer demands for personalized travel products and services through travel agent channels. Airlines and travel agents will require tools and applications to manage this content. While we have every confidence in the abilities of existing players, IATA and Travel Capitalist have created the Innovation Fund to help spark creative solutions even more broadly.”
Abrar Ahmad, a partner at Travel Capitalist:
“This is a great partnership. IATA has the knowledge of the NDC standard and strong relationships with its member airlines and others in the air travel value chain. Travel Capitalist brings deep financial and travel investment expertise. It’s a winning combination that will create an attractive opportunity for companies interested in innovation in the airline distribution space.”
The Fund is soliciting proposals from companies seeking the capital and strategic/business development support needed to develop applications and services to meet current and future industry distribution needs.
The Fund offers resources including complimentary cloud infrastructure solutions (through Microsoft BizSpark) for virtual servers, media streaming, CDN’s, queues and high capacity database options to work alongside a full range of NDC technical resources and experts.
A great amount of information about NDC is published on IATA’s website.
More information may be found at www.ndcinnovationfund.com.
