The acquisition in April of Direct Travel by Concur co-founder Steve Singh and a group of investors caught the attention of the corporate travel world.
The statement at the time said Direct Travel would integrate Spotnana’s technology stack, which drove some in the travel management world to question whether it’s more of a competitor than partner.
In an interview in the PhocusWire studio during Phocuswright Europe 2024, Spotnana’s co-founder and, at the time, chief technology officer, Shikhar Agarwal, said the company needs to be “explicit” about what it’s doing and confirmed that the platform is neutral and that the company is committed to all its partners.
“There was an article where it was thought of as if Spotnana bought Direct Travel and we are a full-blown [travel management company]. So that was not the case. So our executive chairman, Steve Singh, who is now our CEO, along with more investors, actually bought Direct Travel. Spotnana remains to be the platform and we welcome all of the TMCs, OTAs, fintech come suppliers to use the travel platform.”
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The discussion moved on to the greatest challenges for Spotnana in the current market - namely content fragmentation - as well as the greatest challenges for the corporate travel industry.
“One thing I see is the breakage of data from the airline, which is the merchant, to the traveler, there's so many vendors involved doing different things. Everyone owns some part of the data and some don't have full data. So because the data is broken, I feel that the experience, the inventory and all those things break.”
Agarwal added that if data “flows in a very coherent, consistent manner, lots of things get solved, and this becomes the foundation.”
The conversation also touched on the value Singh brings as the newly appointed CEO of Spotnana before moving on to the need for a CTO to remain focused and not get distracted by “shiny objects.”
“On the one hand you get massively excited about the opportunities and where the trends are, like the shiny objects, and at the other hand, you have to just be grounded. You have to ground yourself to the realities.”
He added that he likes to place tasks and projects in three different buckets from the customers and their demands to the company’s differentiators and wider vision and engineering, productivity and technical debt.
An article in the Company Dime last week said Agarwal has since departed Spotnana. A Spotnana spokesperson said: "We appreciate Mr. Agarwal’s contributions to Spotnana, and we wish him well in his future endeavors.”
Watch the full discussion between Agarwal and PhocusWire senior reporter Linda Fox below.