A Chat with Tanuvi Ethunandan CEO & Co-Founder at Tourist Attraction Congestion Platform: Data Duopoly

Data Duopoly is helping to solve the issue of visitor congestion and frustration at attractions such as museums and theme parks.

We have created an app that acts as a live interactive map to show visitors less busy areas. It also has gamified trails for families and youngsters and notifications with personalised incentives such as restaurant discounts. All while gathering valuable data on footfall to help venues with planning.

Our technology also has the potential to be used in places such as universities, airports and retail areas. In fact, we have just launched XplorTINCOAST, commissioned by The Tin Coast Partnership, which provides an interactive experience for visitors exploring the tin mining World Heritage Sites in West Cornwall.
 
 

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
I met my co-founder, Erin Morris, at Falmouth University’s venture studio, Launchpad, in 2018.

Launchpad allows would-be founders to start a business, fee-free, over a year, whilst earning a Masters in Entrepreneurship.

It’s slightly different from other incubators in that you don’t have to turn up with an idea. You are set challenges by Launchpad’s industry partners and asked to come up with solutions.

We were lucky to be partnered with the Eden Project – a top 40 UK attraction. They asked us to look at how visitors were using their site. Our ensuing research with other venues across the country concluded that many:

• Didn’t understand where their visitors were on-site at any given time
• Didn’t have an effective way to disperse large crowds
• Experienced bottlenecks that negatively affected revenue.

Despite having limited tech knowledge, by concentrating on the best outcome for venues and users, we created our first product – XplorIT. This uses satellite data to track where visitors are on-site using GPS.
 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

 
We quickly realised that our technology could help in a world of social distancing and people’s fear of returning to busy places.

We developed a new COVID-19 Crowd Tracker and Report function to help venues support post-pandemic venue recovery and improve visitor confidence.

This new offering enabled us to close our seed round, backed by the European Space Agency and Aerospace Cornwall.

Since then, we have been working on rolling our XplorIT to new venues, including a University Campus to help students and staff return to campus safely.

We were mentioned recently as “100 ones to watch” by CreaTech as part of London Tech Week.
 

What can we hope to see from Data Duopoly in the future?

 
We are launching our next EIS fundraising round to help us scale into more visitor attraction sites and university campuses.

We are also reaching out to venues that are looking to be innovators in their field.

And, we’re growing our team – and are now 6-strong!