Student team wows airlines
A BUSINESS idea developed by enterprising students from Lancaster University Management School has been awarded a £10,000 innovation prize at an international competition.
tripTAB, an onboard entertainment tablet for long haul flights, is already attracting interest from easyJet, Ryanair and British Airways.
The product is the brainchild of undergraduates Varun Shah, Kevin Foster, Alex Roberts, Melissa McCue and Julius Rackys , working with Ian Gordon of the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development.
tripTAB holds hundreds of films, music and games, and will be available for low cost rent during a long haul flight.
Estimated turnover in the first year is £1.2m even after splitting the profits with the airline.
Varun Shah got the idea for tripTAB while bored on a 10 hour flight home to Mumbai.
He explains: “tripTAB is perfect for anyone with nothing to do because it is pre-loaded with rich media content which you can access with a special code so families get suitable content to share.”
He pitched tripTAB at the Startup Weekend contest in Newcastle last month.
The prize includes £10,000 of mentor support from Newcastle Science City and access to a further £10,000 of venture-capital, with the potential to access up to £150,000.
The funding will enable Varun Shah and Kevin Foster to develop tripTAB into a real product which could be available to plane passengers within six months.
There are plans to manufacture the product in India or China and update the licensed media content every few months.
Their business model provides the airlines with free tripTABs, with the profits from rental split. The airlines also benefit from lower fuel costs since heavyweight cabling to passenger seats can be ripped out and replaced with tripTABs.
