With tourism as Goa's biggest revenue earner, the state desperately needs startups that provide practical solutions to problems facing the local industry.
Though the main focus for tourism in the state revolves around hospitality and footfalls, there are issues like mounting garbage that greet tourists. At incubator Forum for Innovation Research and Entrepreneurship (FiiRE), efforts are on to incubate start-ups that have solutions to the tourism industry's every-day problems.
"Tourism tech is not just travel and hospitality. For us it is any solution that creates impact in any tourist geography. , may it be Goa or Maldives or any other country. The point is whether you have a sustainable solution to impact the revenue from tourism," explains FiiRE COO Thejus Joseph.
He says that, FiiRE new focus and vision is, to make Goa the premier destination for tourism tech start-ups by 2030.
It all began at the Goa Tourism Accelerator Program 2021, an event backed by the tourism department, TTAG and other stakeholders, that welcomed start-ups to apply and present their tourism related solutions.
"The point of the program was to see if anyone was applying for it as we were a little sceptical going into it. We noticed that world over tourism was the first sector to be hit because of the COVID pandemic. We received around 50 plus applications for the program, including six from foreign countries and that's when we realised this was a need. It ran for four months and we selected 14 start-ups through it," says Joseph.
Interestingly while most start-ups look for funding, the ones that were selected by FiiRE were interested in creating the business and not the funding. "The common thing we realised was that none of them were asking for funding. They had figured how to survive because of Covid, and they were only looking for business," he says.
The incubator housed in the Don Bosco College of Engineering, Fatorda, plan now is to have at least 100 start-ups in the next two years. It is exploring and supporting tourism tech from across the state as well as other parts of the world, mainly to create a tourism- tech community whose services can be used in any touristic destination.
"Integrating these solutions with setups like the Smart City concept will also help to understand the issues better and to come up with solutions for them. The incubation centre is also looking to work with other agencies and organisations to come up with solutions like waste management and pollution control," explains Joseph.
Some of the aspects of tourism tech that are being looked at and targeted include sustainability in waste management, innovation in cleaning of oceans and wellness.
"Wellness and health are something we feel we can add on to the tourism tech in a big way since we are getting a lot of inbound requests whether for health-related products like foods and energy drinks or just clean tech," says Joseph.
FiiRE offers programs like the founders club where established start-ups have conversations and offer virtual incubation to newcomer start-ups. In addition there are also existing accelerator programs to grow the tourism tech space. Currently the incubator functions with a team of around ten and is headed by D. S. Prashant, CEO, FiiRE.