They successfully established collaborations with renowned global partners in the airline and hospitality industry, such as Etihad, Emirates, Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines and Accor.
utu signed a strategic partnership with Emirates in 2021 / Image Credit: Business Wireĭuring the pandemic, Ameer and Asad also used the time wisely to forge strategic partnerships and refine their business model. Nevertheless, the company managed to raise a small round of funding right before the pandemic in November that year, which “turned out to be a blessing” as it gave utu the liquidity to keep all of its staff employed during the pandemic. However, Ameer candidly shared that utu’s pivot into the tax-free shopping space was far from smooth - COVID-19 quickly shut the rollout of its first product and severely disrupted the business in 2019. – Ameer Jumabhoy, co-founder and VP of Consumer Technology, utu I think it encapsulates perfectly what we want to achieve: rewarding humanity when they travel. I came across the word ‘utu’ meaning ‘reward’ in Maori, and was also recently told it meant ‘humanity’ in Swahili. I’ve always aesthetically liked palindromes and as we were ideating a name for the company, we looked for something that could be abstractly connected to the work we do. When asked about the inspiration behind the business’ name, Ameer said that he was looking for something that could be “abstractly connected to the work does”. Later that year, the company pivoted into the tax-free shopping space, launching its first product at the end of 2019. Utu was first established in 2016, and it released its initial suite of products in the cross-border rewards space in 2018. COVID-19 impacted the business severely Image Credit: utu via Instagram With that, utu was incepted - a travel tech company that aims to help travellers get more out of their tax-free shopping. The father-son duo recognised that “rewards was a broad and overarching concept”, so they decided to channel their efforts into underserved markets, like cross-border tourism, where they could deliver maximum value to shoppers. – Ameer Jumabhoy, co-founder and VP of Consumer Technology, utu Ameer Jumabhoy, co-founder and VP of Consumer Technology, utu / Image Credit: utu
And no matter whether you’re home or away, you should be rewarded for your loyalty and receive value from your shopping purchases. We came to the realisation that everyone is a local somewhere, but sometimes a tourist. This sparked a thought - in an increasingly globalised world, why should loyalty be confined by geographical boundaries? During a trip to Thailand a couple of years back, Asad Jumabhoy - who currently serves as The Scotts Group’s CEO - and his son Ameer Jumabhoy, discovered that they could not utilise their Starbucks reward points (Stars) which they had earned in Singapore at an outlet in Bangkok.
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