The SimpliFlying Story: From an Airline Blog To Digital Consultancy

The airline and airplane business have always fascinated Shashank Nigam, the founder of SimpliFlying. Back in 2008 Shashank was working with a technology start-up in Boston but couldn’t find any intersection between his two interests: technology and airlines. He decided to start a blog to pen down his own observations about airline branding. That was how SimpliFlying started.

A few months into blogging Shashank realized that there are several aspects of airline branding that are unique from other industries. He designed the 6X model for airline branding and wrote a whitepaper on the topic. The whitepaper even got published by Interbrand’s Brandchannel.com in summer 2008.

“That was when I started taking my side “hobby” a little more seriously and sent the whitepaper to some folks I knew in the airline industry, for their review,” said Shashank.

But the feedback Shashank received was somewhat bittersweet. While many airlines liked the concepts in theory, they couldn’t figure out how to put them into action. Back then Shashank was an unknown within the airline industry, and this made the challenge even tougher. But he didn’t give up. Instead, Shashank saw an opportunity to integrate social media with airline branding.

“If I walked into Singapore Airlines office and told them that I want to help with branding, I’d have probably been thrown out. That’s when social media came in handy as a tactic to put the brand strategy into practice, since only a few others are doing it.”

From Employee to a Full-time Entrepreneur

Shashank left his job in Boston and incorporated SimpliFlying in Singapore in December 2008. The journey has been an exciting one since then. He started the business with SGD$20,000 of his own savings and bootstrapped his way to success. The company has been cashflow positive in every quarter since September 2009.

SimpliFlying has expanded from a blog to a digital consultancy which helps airlines and airports to drive key business goals through customer engagement. SimpliFlying offers strategy consulting services, training services, as well as web-based products specifically for the travel industry. Social media in particular, has been used extensively to help clients drive key business objectives, like customer service or loyalty.

Today SimpliFlying has offices in Singapore, New York, and Toronto and has consulted and/or trained leading airlines like airBaltic, Turkish, LAN Airlines and Jet Airways. Its Board of Advisors include Patrick Murphy, the former chairman of Ryanair, social media expert Chris Brogan, and strategy implementation leader Robin Speculand.

“The blog is counted among the top three in aviation, and on Twitter we’re one of the top five most influential on airlines-related topics. And it’s really the future I’m excited about the most,” said Shashank.

SimpliFlying’s Direction

To date, about 60% of SimpliFlying’s revenue come from strategy consulting, 30% from training/speaking, and 10% from web-based products. Currently training is the fastest growing service within the business, but Shashank explained that it’s the web-based products business that he is putting in the most resources in.