o-frills flight means that nothing, not even water, comes for free. Well, you may not want to grab a sandwich or dig into the Idli or savour the coffee, but who would not want to enjoy the in-flight entertainment straight into your mobile devices which you would carry anyway!
An enterprising entrepreneur, G.B. Sai Prabhu has come out with a device, ‘AmuZ’ – A to Z, which when placed in an airplane or even a bus and a train can provide content from music to movies at a certain cost. The device, for which he is awaiting certification from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and other regulatory bodies, will cost between Rs. 10,000 to 15,000 only.
“Short haul flights and most mid-haul flights lack any in-flight entertainment and I am quite sure there is a huge market waiting to be tapped. We can do the same for buses and railways but it is lucrative in planes. Moreover, bureaucratic hassles do not allow these initiatives in rail coaches, though it will be ideal for long-distance trains,” explains Mr. Prabhu.
The 54-year-old, hailing from Bangalore, was ploughing a lonely furrow at the fifth India Aviation 2016 at the Begumpet airport, amidst a multitude of big players, globally and nationally. “We made ‘AmuZ’ and created the software. There are enough players ready to join forces with us on the content front. A couple of airline operators have evinced interest in ‘pay as you travel’. We just need a go-ahead from the authorities,” he says.
Mr. Prabhu, an IT industry veteran, has just a CTO , Zunder Lekshmanan, in his company – Openturf (www.openturf.in), which was incorporated last year. The six-month-old ‘AmuZ’ once installed in each aircraft (three in a plane), one should scan for WiFi, download the app made by the firm, or connect through the browser for accessing the content.
Openturf is aiming to achieve a 25 per cent market share in the next few years, and wants to ensure that ‘AmuZ’ be in 3,500 aircrafts watched by one million paying passengers, besides ensuring a micro payment ecosystem for premium content delivery, both offline and online.
