Amplify Startup Spotlight: Amble
Amble is a pre-seed stage startup that is transforming travel design, focused on developing bespoke travel experiences. Here we talk with Co-Founder Anglia about the startup and experience with the Accelerating Asia team. For Co-Founder Anglia, Amplify is:
“A wonderful platform to gain valuable insights from Craig as an investor/founder/mentor perspective. The sharing from the founders on their own experiences is also very beneficial as it provides us with a deeper understanding of the processes and addresses the common questions/challenges we have as founders. It’s always more assuring to hear it from someone who’s been there.”
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About Amble
Tells us about Amble
Amble is born to address the long-standing pain points of Travel Designers - the underserved of the travel industry. It is the “Swiss Army Knife” of future Travel Designers. By educating, empowering and elevating, Amble will transform the way of travel design.
How was the idea for your startup generated?
Nine years ago, my Co-Founder and I saw the gap in bespoke travel services. We then launched a travel company to fill this need. Soon we discovered that the general market is not ready for our products. In 2014, we repositioned to become Uniq Luxe, and focused our target to the luxury travel sector.
Then, due to decades of price war among the major players, profit margins in Asia travel companies were infamously low. Over the years, we increased our profit margin year-over-year by educating our clients, optimising processes and providing valuable services.
Very quickly, we realised that the industry is so fragmented and travel technology so backward that we must find a solution or the business will not be scalable nor sustainable. It’s a common, chronic (fixable) pain among Travel Designers and travel companies alike. Many IT companies came up with solutions, but these are simply solutions to what they think are the problems. It is like slapping band-aids to an internal injury. It’s a dire problem that must, and can, be solved.
What problem are you solving?
The problem is that customising a travel drains too much precious time from Travel Designers.
The focus of a Travel Designer should be to craft the perfect holiday and provide a personalised service for their clients (travellers). Instead, Travel Designers are often bogged down by paperwork and fragmented processes. This eventually affects the quality of products/services as well as the mental health of these Travel Designers.
Whilst it’s no rocket science, without the right solution, travel planning becomes painfully (unnecessarily) complicated.
How does your startup work?
Amble works off 3 pillars - educate, empower, elevate. It is like the Swiss Army knife for Travel Designers (and travel companies). It’s an educational platform; a simple-to-use tool with dedicated solutions for different stakeholders (Travel Designers, travellers, travel suppliers); a community platform to allow collaboration within the travel industry.
What market are you focused on?
We will first start in Singapore. After establishing a strong foundation, we’ll quickly move to expand across South East Asia, then capturing Asia Pacific market.
The team
Who is the team behind your startup?
We have 3 Co-Founders - Lim Hui Ting (product), Anglia Anthon (business/ops), Yamin Tengono (tech).
Huiting and I have been friends since high school and together we have almost 20 years of experience in the travel industry, specifically bespoke travel segments. Besides travel, our common passion is technology and the limitless possibilities it creates. These put us in the sweet spot of understanding the pains of customising travel plans, as well as identifying how technology can help to solve the problem and make things 100x better.
Yamin has over 20 years of experience as a full-stack developer and solution architect. More importantly, he is able to understand the business needs, which makes him invaluable to lead our tech development.
Why are you uniquely positioned to solve the problem?
To put it simply, we’ve been in the trenches - as Travel designers as well as business owners. We experienced the pain, we know the problem first-hand. Coupled with our understanding of technology and its capabilities, we are not just uniquely positioned to solve the problem - we are in the perfect spot.
We’ve also dedicated the past 7 years in finding the formula to solve the problem. We’ve run many trials and errors, testing out various theories. The trials range from tech-focus, creating our own scripts to automate and streamline certain processes, to trying different business and operation models, to running recruitment programmes to find ideal customer profiles.
Experience with the Amplify
Why did you join Amplify?
I came to know of Accelerating Asia through friends, Jenny & Paul. Jenny Pan of CarePod, was the first batch of startups from Muru-D. Paul Meyers heads the Muru-D programme together with Craig. I saw Amplify as a great bridge to gain knowledge and insights of capital raising and other related matters.
What was your biggest takeaway from Amplify?
It happened that currently we are in the midst of preparing to raise funds. Thus materials relating to pitching to investors, especially founder stories and the pitch sessions videos are most helpful as they address my current pain points.
Why would you recommend Amplify to fellow founders?
It’s a wonderful platform to gain valuable insights from Craig as an investor/founder/mentor perspective. The sharing from the founders on their own experiences is also very beneficial as it provides us with a deeper understanding of the processes and addresses the common questions/challenges we have as founders. It’s always more assuring to hear it from someone who’s been there.
What sessions did you find the most useful?
Pitching videos, Nesh’s interviews with the founders and pitching feedback from Craig.
How did Amplify change your approach or what is the one thing/area where Amplify made a difference and how did you apply it to your startup?
It has definitely shaped my deck to be more pitch-worthy.
Amble was part of Amplify, our 6 module program that delivers a how-to guide to raising outside capital and 10x’ing your startup growth. Doors are now open to join Amplify.
If you are interested in connecting with Amble please reach out to us and we can help facilitate an introduction.
Disclaimer
In making an investment decision, investors must rely on their own examination of startups and the terms of the investment including the merits and risks involved. Prospective investors should not construe this content as legal, tax, investment, financial or accounting advice.