Company: Arcube
Co-Founders: Harvey Lowe (COO), Prithveesh Reddy (CEO)
Website: https://www.arcube.com/
About Arcube
Airlines today face one of the toughest business models in the world. Ticket sales deliver margins of barely 2–3%, while operational costs, fuel volatility and economic shocks continue to rise. The only proven path to sustainable profitability is selling extras such as baggage, seat upgrades, insurance, lounges, car hire and eSIMs. Yet, for airlines, building modern retailing to support ancillaries in-house is slow, costly and complicated. It easily takes airlines 3-5 years to source, negotiate, sign and integrate a handful of ancillary partners.
We created Arcube to solve this. Prithveesh – the co-founder of Arcube – and I built our first startups as teenagers before meeting at the University of Manchester. It was while we were still students that we created Arcube with the mission to make airline retail as simple and scalable as e-commerce.
Arcube aggregates thousands of travel services into one quick integration, allowing airlines to launch new revenue streams in weeks instead of years. Through a single connection, partners gain access to 6,100+ suppliers worldwide, covering everything from lounges and fast-track security to car rentals, eSIMs and local experiences. Arcube has a proprietary AI retailing engine that personalises which products each passenger sees, at what price and at what point in their journey, using hundreds of data points.
This combination of aggregation and intelligence makes Arcube the first platform that lets any airline, from regional carriers to global brands, increase their ancillary revenue overnight. Airlines avoid heavy setup costs, while passengers receive relevant, high-value offers in their own language and currency.
While at university, we bootstrapped the company to six-figure revenue and secured Etihad Airways as our first customer. In our first commercial pilot with Etihad, 1,300 passengers redeemed 16.5 million miles and increased average order value by 10.3%. The results proved our ability to create measurable financial impact in a live production environment. That success attracted a $1.5 million seed round co-led by Oxford Capital and Fuel Ventures, with participation from senior airline leaders – validation not only of the product, but of its long-term potential to reshape airline economics.
With our base now at Sister, a new innovation hub in Manchester, we have a pipeline of tens of airlines across five continents, award wins from Santander X Global, FTE Innovate, and the Golden Loyalty Awards, as well as a vision to help travel providers generate over $1 billion in new revenue within five years.
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