OREANDA-NEWS. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) and Travel Capitalist Ventures (TCV) announced that TCV is withdrawing from the New Distribution Capability Innovation Fund (NDCIF) citing severely deteriorating global economic and market conditions affecting early stage investments. The process to identify a new investment partner is underway. No NDCIF investments have been made to date.

“We remain strongly committed to the NDCIF as a vehicle for promoting innovation around the NDC standard and we are seeking a new investment partner to support its important mission,” said Yanik Hoyles, IATA Director, NDC Program.

NDCIF will continue to look for opportunities to support early stage companies seeking to support airline distribution and the NDC standard in particular. One emerging source of that innovation is the NDC hackathons. “The successful October 2015 hackathon in Hamburg demonstrated that there are many innovators with NDC-based ideas that are viable prospects for funding. The NDCIF will look to facilitate investments in these and other areas going forward,” Hoyles said.

“We remain steadfast supporters of IATA and the NDC Standard, generally speaking and for our own investments, and look forward to even greater adoption by travel companies of all sizes,” said Abrar Ahmad, a principal of TCV.