Spotlight on Manish Nagpal: Driving innovation in airline retailing

Manish Nagpal is Spotnana’s Head of Engineering for Air. His team is responsible for developing our best-in-class booking experience for flights and building deep direct integrations with the world’s top airlines. 

Before Spotnana, Manish was SVP Product and also served as interim CPO at Accelya Group, which acquired his previous company Farelogix. During his tenure at Farelogix, Manish excelled in various capacities overseeing technology, sales engineering, and post-merger integration of their combined product portfolio. 

Enjoying the challenge of revolutionizing air travel

Given his cumulative career work, Manish was excited to join a company that was optimizing travel bookings, especially around NDC.

“For 18 years, I was an integral part of the team that was building NDC, the direct-to-consumer play for airlines,” said Manish. “I found that Spotnana was primed to solve one of the biggest problems within the industry around adopting NDC and revolutionizing airline retailing.”

For Manish, it was important to join a company that focused first and foremost on the value of its product. He was eager to work with our Travel-as-a-Service platform, which we provide directly to corporations as well as through channel partners.

“Very few companies, if any, in the travel domain are true product companies,” said Manish. “Spotnana is a product-driven organization, and we really believe in the quality of the Travel-as-a-Service platform that we are building for the benefit of the whole travel industry.”

His career journey came full circle at Spotnana when he developed the deepest direct NDC integration to date between Spotnana and United Airlines.

“At my previous company, I helped United Airlines build their NDC offering,” said Manish. “At Spotnana, I was able to consume what I originally built and provide it to the corporate world. It was rewarding to work again with the same folks who were my innovation partners years ago and truly address the full end-to-end traveler journey for business travelers through NDC.”

Driving innovation at a rapid pace

Manish attributes our rapid growth to our significant investment in hiring the right people and building our shared community at Spotnana.

“It’s remarkable to see the talent and culture that Spotnana already has as a young startup,“ said Manish. “There are smart folks on the Engineering side, and they are given challenges that bring out the best of their abilities. The Air team has been able to produce so many revolutionary new features in the last few months alone.”

He believes that junior engineers beginning their careers flourish at Spotnana given how the company leverages the best qualities of large and small organizations and teams. 

“There are very few companies where a junior engineer has the opportunity to make a massive impact,” said Manish. “In larger companies, they can get lost, and in smaller companies, they may not be given the best direction. Spotnana is unique in that it is a smaller company with the structure of a well-organized, product-driven organization and the opportunities to drive quick impact.”

No matter where an engineer is in their career, Manish knows that they can expect to engage with partners and innovate at unprecedented speed. Customers and partners tell him that they haven’t seen anything comparable to Spotnana’s rapid pace of development.

“We have heard from our partners and customers that they are blown away by the capabilities and integrations that our engineers can develop in only a few months,” said Manish. “The recent partnerships that we’ve announced with CWT, Solutions Travel, Brex, American Airlines, and United Airlines are proof of what we can do quickly on a global scale.”

Appreciating our focus on the whole organization and the travel industry

Manish has found that one of our core Spotnana values, Act like owners, is found in our ability to quickly process customer feedback and adapt our product for their needs. 

“If a traveler has feedback or suggestions for Spotnana, their message will automatically generate a Jira for our teams,” said Manish. “I have not seen that anywhere else in my career. This company owns their opportunities for self-improvement and is very proactive.”

He also appreciates our approach to maintaining a global, respectful family of Spotters, united in our commitment to modernizing the travel industry.

“At Spotnana, I have only ever been treated with respect,” said Manish. 

Manish is excited to help shape the future of the travel industry with the colleagues that have supported his journey and ambitions at Spotnana.

“Ultimately, we are trying to solve decades-old problems together which nobody has been able to solve yet,” said Manish. “I have no doubt that in five years time, we will make the biggest impact in bringing the entire industry our modern retailing experience powered by open, cloud-based technology.”