A new British-South Asian low-fare long haul airline, flypop, has completed a Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) funding round of £80,000 with Angel Investment Network.
The new low-fare, long-haul airline will focus on point-to-point direct flights from the UK to secondary cities in several South Asian countries, beginning with India. Operating from London Stansted Airport and flying to the Indian cities of Punjab and Gujarat. The operator is targeting the 1.5 million Indian diaspora in the UK, with the goal of providing return ticket prices from £350 including taxes. The funding will be used for offices at Stansted Airport, the reservations website and the first TV commercial.
The team behind the new airline have stated that they will be able to pass cost savings back to the consumers via lower airport charges to tier two airports and its unique ‘wet’ lease start-up agreements. The first flights are expected to be announced in late 2019. Long term goals of the airline is to expand further from North America and Europe to South Asia via the UK and, the business is now looking to raise £4m in its next SEIS funding round. The team at flypop also intend to make the airline carbon neutral, offsetting each passenger that flies with the planting of a tree in a flypop forest in the UK or South Asia.
According to Nino Judge, founder of flypop: “We gained a great deal of interest for the successful SEIS raise in early 2019 and hope this momentum carries on with many global angles on the AIN platform. The low-cost non-stop aspect really resonated with a lot of investors from South Asia. They make these journeys frequently themselves and could relate to this product.”
