Christine Wang, head of business development for Lufthansa Innovation Hub’s new centre in Asia (pictured right), speaks to Yeoh Siew Hoon about her learnings as she takes her first dip into travel and aviation and her plans to engage with startups in the region in the area of travel and mobility tech.
Q: When was the Lufthansa Innovation Hub set up in Asia? And why the need to set up in the region?
Lufthansa Innovation Hub was established in Berlin in 2014. Our Lufthansa Innovation Hub Asia was set up in Singapore in early 2019. As an innovation company that focuses on Travel & Mobility Tech, being in Asia is a no brainer.
Not only do we see that US$75 billion of VC money has gone into Travel & Mobility Tech in Asia from 2010-2019, but it is also 30% bigger than US/Europe VC funds combined.
More importantly, Asians are much more ahead when it comes to adopting new technologies and new digital behaviours. The reason to set up camp here is to be much closer to these innovative developments, to work closely with ecosystem partners and be able to act quicker.
Q: You were running your own business in Shanghai providing go-to China digital services to global companies. Why did you decide to take up the Lufthansa role of head of business development, Asia? Did the fact that you were born in Germany, and speak six languages, in addition to German, help?
Having lived in 14 places around the world over the last 10 years and being an avid travel and drone photographer, travelling has always played an important role in my life. Being Chinese and growing up in Germany has also exposed me to Western and Asian values and allowed me to develop cultural fluency. My background is furthermore in Business and Computer Science and I have spent the majority of my time in tech and start-ups.
As such, I deeply care about enabling people to connect more meaningfully via travelling, helping to bridge between cultures and businesses as well as to drive tech and innovation forward in traveling – my role at Lufthansa Innovation Hub combines all the above.
Q: You’ve never worked in travel or aviation before – your experience covers Boston Consulting Group, Alibaba Group, BCG Digital Ventures, you also did a couple of startups … what are your first lessons about the travel industry? Which sector are you finding most interesting and why?
I get excited about how many opportunities there are to transform the aviation industry. Sometimes I wonder how the aviation industry would look like if it was built from scratch today. Along the same lines I think about: How would a mobile-first type of travel experience look like? How would an asset-light platform approach to airlines work? How could countries, airlines and travel companies work more efficiently hand in hand via technology?
I see part of my responsibility to be to take learnings from other industries and apply it to the pain points and challenges of the travel and aviation industry.
Q: Which sector is Lufthansa Innovation Hub most interested in, in Asia? Or are those interests influenced by headquarters thinking? Or do you get local leeway in the areas you feel the hub should be more active in? Are the sectors of interest greatly differently between Europe and Asia or are we seeing a commonality in “hot” sectors?
Lufthansa Innovation Hub focuses on the Travel & Mobility tech (T&MT) space and is looking to derive new business models and unlocking new value along the travel chain. We do this by deep data driven research into the TMT ecosystem, partnering with travel players, investing into T&MT start-ups or building own ventures. Our aim is to look beyond flying and core business.
While our vision and mission is the same, we work market-driven, meaning we adapt to local topics, content and way of doing business, hence Lufthansa Innovation Hub Asia also has its own strategic topics and focus. At the same time, for us to really hit the road running in Asia Pacific, it is very helpful to have the Lufthansa Group by our side, one of the most successful aviation companies and most well-known brands in the world.
Q: Tell us more about the Lufthansa Innovation Hub – I am sure you got an orientation and deep immersion into its thinking. What change does it want to bring to travel? What have some of its achievements been so far in Europe?
We are the thought leader when it comes to trends and players in the Travel & Mobility tech (T&MT) space. We have a market intelligence platform and newsletter that tracts those activities on a global level (http://tnmt.com/). We are also starting a more dedicated version of it in Asia, with a dedicated VC and Start-up Report on Asia to be published by end of March, an early sign up for the Asian newsletter can be found here.
In Europe we currently have three successful ventures operating:
- A sustainability solution to compensate flights: Compensaid.com
- A trans-modal loyalty platform: Rydes
- A platform for innovative ticket pricing called Reveneo
We foresee similar activities here in Asia as we are building out the business here.
Q: What change does it want to bring to Asia? What are some of the activities it is planning to roll out? Reports, Incubator, Accelerator? Is there a fund attached to it, to invest in startups?
We are looking to get plugged into the T&MT ecosystem, get connected to new and interesting Asia start-ups in this space, see how we can collaborate with travel players and find whitespots in the market. The goal is to actively drive the T&MT conversation in Asia and actively shape and enable the ecosystem as a thought leader.
Our activities are comprised of:
- Discover – regular analysis and reports including deal flow, startup tracking, trend analysis of T&MT in Asia
- Partnership – build commercial partnerships with travel-related companies
- Transform – bring knowledge from the region to our European counterparts and the Lufthansa organisation
- Invest & build – when there is a strategic fit
We are not an incubator or accelerator programme.
Q: What kind of startups are you interested in?
Open to B2B and B2C start-ups in the space of travel, hospitality, mobility. inspirational search, corporate traveling, AI/analytics, supply chain/logistics, mobility (air and land), cloud solutions, etc.
Q: Does being an outsider to travel give you an advantage at a time when technology really has blurred the boundaries between industries? What new thinking do you want to bring to travel?
I have worked in many industries along digitisation and building value propositions. I leverage and draw from different industries (automotive, mining, insurance, consumer, e-commerce, tech) and different markets across Europe, Africa, North America and Asia – this is the thinking I bring to the travel space now.
• Images credit: Christine Wang