Mezi uses AI and human expertise to personalise online booking experience

Mezi founders Swapnil Shinde and Snehal Shinde are also planning to back start-ups

“Being a travel guru, and knowing all the travel tricks, I finally found something that finds the deals I find and saves me a tonne of time,” says Kim J, a user of Mezi, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered travel app developed by Pune-born twin brothers.

Adding: “What a great service! Everyone should have Mezi.”

Mezi was co-founded in 2015 by serial entrepreneurs Swapnil Shinde and Snehal Shinde. Sunnyvale-headquartered, it was acquired by American Express last month. It now operates as a wholly-owned subsidiary of AmEx.

The company has two offices in this country, Mumbai and Pune. It has 45 of its 60 employees based in the two cities.

“Mezi’s AI-powered experience opens exciting new ways for us to connect with and serve our card members, creating opportunities for us to build more meaningful relationships with them,” said Phil Norman, vice-president of American Express Digital Labs.

He added: “With messaging emerging as a channel of choice for many, and the demand for unique experiences increasing, we believe the combination of Mezi’s capabilities with our global network of expert travel counsellors creates a differentiated, high-touch service experience for our card members.”

Concept

Started as personalised and direct to consumer personal shopping assistant, Mezi has pivoted to being a personal assistant for business  travel. The app helps consumer and clients of travel management companies plan and book trips. Travellers simply message their requests for flights, hotel or restaurant reservations; Mezi provides personalised recommendations and makes the arrangements.

By learning a traveller’s preferences and understanding the way customers make requests, Mezi gets smarter and more efficient over time, says Snehal.  

Its mobile chatbot interface and machine learning algorithms are utilised to automate travel and concierge platforms within AmEx Mobile Assist. As a result, AmEx can scale up support to its staff for handling additional requests. Also, to eliminate redundant conversations by leveraging historic preferences and data, says the co-founder.

In early 2017, the company moved completely to a business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) model by partnering with various companies.

Opportunity

The company has less than 10 core partners. It has corporate travel partners and concierge partners. Mezi’s core audience is business travellers, with over 100,000 using the platform.

“We are growing more than 100 per cent year-over-year (yoy). Our growth rate is less to do with users and more to do with the number of partners and how deep we can go with them, like AmEx, which has more than 100 million users,” said Swapnil.

Terming the travel market as humongous, he says about half the global travel market is online. “We are going behind the offline market. The market size is $350-500 billion,” he adds.

Revenue model

Mezi’s revenue comes from the monthly licensing fee and transaction fee, on top of the licensing fees.

“We partner with companies which have a core focus on travel/concierge, like AmEx and/or travel management companies. Our partners license our AI-powered Travel-as-a-Service platform,” says co-founder Swapnil Shinde.

Ahead

Mezi will stay a wholly owned subsidiary of AmEx and continue to work the same way, says Swapnil. “Day-to-day operations of will remain the same, and we will continue to grow as a start-up. We both (the twins) will also continue to be very involved in the business. Additionally, Mezi will continue to offer its digital concierge services to consumers, travel management companies and travel agents.”

In the next 12 months, they plan a big launch with AmEx in the US. “Our goal is to get Mezi into the hands of two to three million users over the next 12-18 months,” says Swapnil. And, over the next couple of years, to launch operations in other countries.

The twin brothers are also planning backing startups that are interesting by closely workin with funds like Nexus and Saama Capital.

“We will keep ensuring our bots continue to have  human-like conversation with our customers. This is key to our success as we scale across millions. Increasing the automation response we have is a main focus. Our goal is to get to an 80 per cent response rate — we currently operate at 60 per cent automation — in at least the business category in the next three to six months,” said Snehal.

The company has raised two rounds of funding. In the seed round, Mezi had raised $2.5 million in 2015, led by Nexus Venture Partners. In 2016, another $9 mn, co-led by American Express Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners and Saama Capital. The plan is to invest more in AI and machine learning technology.

Expert Take
 

Ashwini Kakkar, Co-owner, Mercury Travels

Tech integration will help Amex reduce costs, improve services

In a concerted effort to automate their high-touch services, Amex has recently acquired a three-year-old personalisation  start-up, Mezi.

Through a combination of Artificial Intelligence (AI) & machine learning, Mezi has been trying to personalise customer offerings over messaging platforms like WhatsApp & SMS along with mobile Chatbot interfaces to deliver highly individualised responses to customer travel requests.

The use of these technologies reduces the need for human interventions from expert travel counsellors to straight forward transactions, while still providing the safety net of the counsellor network in cases of complexity.

This technology integration move will enable Amex to reduce costs and improve their standard services. It will also prepare them to compete better as IATA launches its new distribution capability and to provide automated yet personalised services, not only to their credit card & corporate customers but also to the end customers of the large, newly acquired Hogg Robinson Group (HRG) corporate travel business.