IBS Software, President, Jitendra Sindhwani at CAPA’s Americas Aviation Summit 2023

Transcript

Jitendra Sindhwani:Yeah, I think as the pandemic progressed, of course, they had to reflect back on what they're going to do when the pandemic really ends, right? And the one realization was that they were sitting on a lot of legacy technology in all parts of the businesses, not just the front-end piece of serving the customer. but even the backend also of, you know, your operations, crew operations, and other systems, right? So one realization everybody had was how backward they were from the technology perspective. So that was one realization. And hence coming out of that, almost all the airlines that we're speaking to or that we're working with today— we work with more than 150 airlines in the world— one clear move is that they have started to invest in technology a lot more than what they were doing pre-pandemic. So that's a big shift. That's happening now. I think the pace of technology investment post-pandemic has changed a lot because there was a clear realization that airlines had that they have been doing patchy investment in the technology, right? They were fixing some parts of the problems. They were, of course, a lot more doing on the mobile side, investing in the front-end customer-facing technologies. But the whole back-end piece of, you know, whether it's flight operations or even the old legacy transformation, the old legacy systems around reservations, etc. All of that has been sitting in a much older technology bucket. So coming out of pandemic, that's one realization that has happened, that you need to invest in these areas because the consumer itself has changed a lot. The demands have changed. They're a lot more aware of what they want. And hence one big shift that is happening is an increased investment in technology coming out of pandemic. I think it depends on the airlines as to where they are. Definitely In investing in owning the customer and providing them better experience, that's definitely coming at the top of the bucket, right? And with that comes a lot of investment in data, a lot of investment in systems that's supporting that. But the other big shift that I'm also seeing is investment in the backend technology areas, like I talked about flight operations, right, or the crew operations, right, or the flight maintenance systems, right? I think all the systems where investment was not made in many years, or it was made many, many years ago, That's also quite a bit of shift that's happening now. So again, depending on an airline and where they are in their journey, pretty much more than one area is being picked up for investment now. Very good, actually. I am pleasantly surprised because I am seeing there is a clear realization that they need to leapfrog into the next level of technology. Most of the travel operators or the airlines are in that bucket now. So that's definitely generating a lot of investments. Opportunity, enhance the opportunities for us. But interestingly for us, we are probably the only entity in the travel tech space which brings so many distinct platforms, not just focused on one part of the problem of airlines or one part of the supply chain, but across, you know, the customer-facing systems, the reservation systems, the flight operations, crew operations, end-to-end cargo management, maintenance system. So we are probably the only entity in the world which brings end-to-end next-gen platforms being offered in SaaS across these parts of the value chain. So that is giving us a huge opportunity now coming out of pandemic.

Copyright policy: All transcripts on this site are the copyright of CAPA - Centre for Aviation. Our reproduction policy is as follows: you may quote up to 400 words of any transcript on the condition that you attribute the transcript to CAPA - Centre for Aviation and link to the original video page. All other use is prohibited. While we aim for 100% accuracy in the transcript, there may be some minor transcribing errors.