Ross Veitch, our Chief Product Officer and one of the co-founders of Bezurk, was invited to speak at an event called Popout – Emerging web startups organized by The Digital Movement. Our team went along to Suntec Hall 2 to join the crowd of techno-savvy professionals, students, nerds and curious netizens in learning about the newest web technologies and exciting local startups. Ross was assigned to be the first presentor and so had the advantage of a crowd that is still attentive. Other presentors include Quaff, ZopIM, bookjetty and recruit.net  (atleast those were the ones i remember).

Apart from highlighting the features of Bezurk’s travel search, Ross also shared the things he wished he knew when he started Bezurk, like working more hours and being forced to learn about financial and investment jargons. While Ross was speaking, I noticed a lot of “paparazzis” taking a photo of him and I thought he forgot to mention that being a technopreneur can also make you an instant celebrity, you even end up in a magazine cover!

As a final note to aspiring technopreneurs who want a piece of the pie and promise of million returns, Ross advised to “never do it only for money, but do it for something you are passionate about.” Being in the travel industry for quite a time now, I’ve met people who are in their jobs because they are passionate about travel. They are those who will never be satisfied with the existing practices when they know they could be doing more. These are the same people I met at bezurk – people who have given up corporate life, x-figure salaries, and retirement plans for the joy of creating a solution and fulfilling a vision.

This vision is what fuels the ever evolving engine of Bezurk, and we aim to have our partners and users reap the benefits. As one of the attendees of the event (now also a Bezurk convert) has put it, “Bezurk really seems like the solution many travellers have been looking for. It saves the trouble of having to go through Google search results individually to find what you want (and the best deals of course). In fact, I would call Bezurk the “Google” of travelling.” Now that’s enough said.

Business 2.0 magazine published by The FORTUNE/MONEY Group of Time Inc., has named Bezurk as one of “31 of the world’s hottest startups”.

The feature article is headed “It’s a Web, Web, Web 2.0 world” and leads in with “Not all of the startup action happens in Silicon Valley. Business 2.0 Magazine picks the top websites outside the U.S. that are changing the world.” The list was compiled by Business 2.0 journalists Erick Schonfeld and Yi-Wen Yen.

Here’s an interactive map of where the 31 hottest start ups are located – We are proud to have placed Singapore firmly on the map.

Here’s a complete list of all 31 sites:

Burrp (India)
Weblin (Germany)
Vivapets (Portugal)
Tangler (Australia)
Rebtel (Sweden)
Widsets (Finland)
Bezurk (Singapore)
Tractis (Spain)
Maxthon (China)
YoYo Games (UK)
Trivop (France)
Bliin (Netherlands)
Joost (UK)
Babelgum (Italy)
Sky-Click (Switzerland)
Stardoll (Sweden)
OhmyNews (South Korea)
Keotag (New Caledonia)
Spreadshirt (Germany)
mTouche (Malaysia)
Trendio (Sweden)
eSnips (Israel)
Myubo (Slovakia)
Afrigator (South Africa)
Pixrat (India)
Cambrian House (Canada)
Kichdee (India)
Mobagetown (Japan)
Babytree (China)
eDushi (China)
Aprex (Brazil)

Here’s a follow up article on where last years hottest start ups are now

Hitwise (a leading online competitive intelligence service) has found that Bezurk has reached an 8-month high (week ending 7 July, 2007), ranking at 9th position within the Travel industry in Singapore!

We are looking to replicate our success in Singapore to all of our other key markets as we quickly expand our coverage across the Asia Pacific region. And… today being Friday, I think we should celebrate our achievement by drinking 9 beers each!!!

When you are working in a start up with a boot strap PR budget, it always a pleasant surprise to discover free PR coverage, especially when its on a main stream publication like LA Times.  

It also re-affirms the notion that with the proliferation of e-ticketing that travellers can now book flights from anywhere to anywhere without the previous geographic limitations of having to book through their local travel agents. 

The Travel LA Times article promotes Bezurk to US travellers looking to book flights and travel deals within Asia.  

A big thank you to LA times for finding us and then promoting us to their readers. They also provided some good feedback on the frequency of our deals…….which we have noted.

Our office phones started ringing last week with the buzz that Bezurk.com was featured on Channel News Asia’s Surf Time. The coolest part of being on TV is that it came as a complete surprise, we were not aware that Channel News Asia were working on the segment. Its a great feeling when our hard work is recognized unaided. Take a peek at the segment below.

We are very excited to be swapping Bezurk’s Orange colour for an All Black . We have recently signed a distribution partnership with Scoop ( New Zealand’s largest independant publisher) to promote Bezurk’s travel search engine to the New Zealand market ( Full Press Release Here)

New Zealand (NZ) is often a market which is over looked by companies when expanding into Asia Pacific one only needs to look at what happened to Ebay for not launching a localized site for the New Zealander’s where a New Zealand start up Trademe.co..nz won the mindshare in the NZ online auctions and classifieds market. 

We have already started signing up local NZ travel companies to partner with Bezurk.com so that our engine is localised to feature NZ travel products which will be relevant to the Kiwis. Watch this space to find out when we launch Scoop site. 

We announced today our marketing partnership with Qatar Airways. Under the agreement, Qatar Airways will promote its fares on Bezurk.com’s flights search engine and deals channel. 

We are very excited to be working with Qatar Airways as they have recently made major enhancements to their booking engine which allows e-ticketing from within Asia and  access to their best available fares. Qatar ’s investment in their new booking system and consumer facing website certainly puts them in a great position  to stamp their mark on the online travel market place and having Peter Pohlschmidt working in their E-commerce team is another plus. Peter is a seasoned veteran in the online marketing industry having worked at both Opodo in Europe and Zuji in Asia.

If you have time read the history of Qatar Airways at Wikipedia its amazing to read what Qatar Airways have acheived since 1993 when they launched operations.

You may have seen our travel search boxes on other sites across the Asia Pacific region like on News.com.au, TODAY Online, The China Post, New Straits Times and Malaysiakini. What kind of arrangement do we have with these sites and our other distribution and affiliate partners? Bezurk offers a very attractive revenue share for revenue earned from our partner’s traffic, enabling them to deliver a leading travel search experience to their users while earning $$$ at the same time (read: leveraging leading technology to enhance the value proposition for site visitors through highly synergistic initiatives while maximizing financial returns — NB: I’m a recovering management consultant).

So that’s who we power… so what powers us?

Bezurk is powered by the following quality products:
- Starbucks (coffee keeps us awake.. the favourite in the office seems to be vanilla latte)
- Doritos, Ruffles and Cheetos (for a small company we go through an incredible amount of chips per day.. our chip per employee ratio is growing solidly every month)
- Pepper Lunch (the lunch of champion developers apparently..)
- Beer (it really helps that our office is in Boat Quay, Singapore)