
BEST PRACTICE SPONSOR 2020
13TECHSIMULATER |
I saw an opportunity and drew up
a proposal, detailing my plans to
revolutionise and modernise Qatar
Airways’ use of technology. Key to
this would be the ability to book
flights through an app and use
paperless boarding systems instead
of physical boarding passes. Based
on my experience with Rovio, and
the strength of my proposal, my
application was successful and I was
awarded a $30 million contract,
something which truly changed
my life. Rather than acting as
external project managers, we were
intimately involved in the creation
of the system itself, hiring an
outside team and undertaking the
developmentourselves.
Striving forward
Since that time, we have been on an
amazing journey, much of which is
covered in our previous contribution to
the
Review
.
We have expanded internationally,
and l have moved to Canada for
a couple of years to expand our
presence in North America. To support
these efforts, we have opened new
offices in New York and Toronto
and I travel freely between the two,
getting directly involved with our
expansionefforts.
We have also begun work on two
new projects, supplementing our
existing Heelo and DrugFreeTaste
products. The first of these is Gelt, a
new banking app. With the recent
explosion in smaller, smartphone-
centred banking apps, like Monzo and
Starling, we have identified a gap in
the market. The development of this
app was prompted by our issues with
Barclays, specifically an instance last
year in which they froze our assets
due to their misunderstanding of
the international transfers we were
undertaking. This highlighted to me
that there was a gap in the market for
certain types of customers, especially
those in the tech industry.
Drawing on the Hebrew word for
money for the name, our aim is to
provide the market with easy access
to banking, cheaper rates and a
novel twist on Know Your Customer
regulations to make our customers
feel more at ease. This project is still in
development and we are continually
adding innovative elements, including
building new futures and developing a
credit card to accompany the app, the
first time any online banking company
will offer such a product. We predict
it will be around two and a half years
until this product is launched.
Our second new project is PaperIt.
As climate issues, and especially
deforestation, are coming ever more to
the forefront of global discussion, we
set out to create a product that would
fully digitise the note-making process,
removing the need for any physical
paper documents.
Utilising AI and machine learning,
the program underlying PaperIt will
automatically create a summary of any
new file, allowing the user to find past
notes or documents with ease. There
are many note-taking apps currently
available, but they contain significant
flaws, including making individual
TechSimulater’s UK
office is based in London
My journey in
app
development
started when
Iwas just 13
“
“