Singapore team wins AirAsia’s hackathon
SEPANG: In its quest to transform from being a low-cost carrier to a digital savvy airline, AirAsia yesterday organised its inaugural “hackathon”.
Titled “2017 Airvolution”, the hackathon involves AirAsia pitting 20 teams from nine countries consisting of computer engineers, coders, programmers, graphic designers and software developers to collaborate and compete against each other on tasks relevant to the company’s strategy and targets.
Following an 18-hour contest held at AirAsia’s RedQ, here yesterday, team Aviato from Singapore emerged with the best proposal – “How to profile AirAsia fans based on their digital social footprint to improve customer experience”.
The proposal could potentially allow AirAsia to use its customers’ social profile such as Instagram to allow the company to make targeted offers involving destinations and meals which reflect their interest.
For their winning effort, the team, which comprised Singapore nationals Choo Yan Sheng, John Goh Choo Ern, Durwin Ho Hsu Tian, Albert Puah Beng Hong and Kevin Kwa Leung Boon, was awarded the grand prize of RM25,000, 100,000 AirAsia BIG Points and five return flights to any AirAsia destination.
AirAsia chief data and digital officer Nikunj Shanti said the airline was really impressed by the creative problem-solving and technical knowledge put on display.
“The teams demonstrated some truly out-of-the-box thinking.”