French travel technology start-up Kolet is expanding its business-to-business-to-consumer eSIM connectivity model across the Asia-Pacific region by leveraging strategic partnerships with major international airlines. Founded in 2024, the young enterprise initially established its unique airline-focused distribution model across Europe, quickly gaining traction through high-profile collaborations with legacy carriers including Air France-KLM and Virgin Atlantic. Under those foundational European agreements, Air France-KLM integrated Kolet’s advanced infrastructure to allow members of its Flying Blue frequent-flyer program to seamlessly earn and redeem miles in exchange for mobile data packages. Meanwhile, British carrier Virgin Atlantic introduced a complimentary one-gigabyte data trial utilizing Kolet’s embedded subscriber identity module technology, offering passengers a taste of reliable connectivity the moment they land at their destinations.
Building upon this early European momentum, the start-up has begun scaling its operations into the lucrative Asia-Pacific aviation market. According to Eduardo Ronzano, co-founder and chief executive officer of Kolet, the regional expansion was largely organic and driven by market demand rather than an aggressive, top-down corporate push. In an interview with travel trade publication TTG Asia, Ronzano noted that the company’s innovative model naturally turned heads across the globe. Asia-Pacific essentially came to them before they actively targeted the market, with regional carriers taking notice of the European deployments. As a result, prominent regional operators such as Singapore Airlines and Vietnam Airlines are already live with Kolet’s services, and this milestone was achieved without the tech start-up needing to open a single physical office within the region. Ronzano emphasized that this organic growth illustrates the core strength of their distribution approach, explaining that their trusted partners effectively take them wherever their passengers happen to fly.
Having successfully established a foothold through direct airline integrations, Kolet is now setting its sights on broadening its footprint within the wider Asia-Pacific travel sector. The company is actively targeting a diverse array of regional businesses, including traditional travel agencies, online travel agencies, travel management companies, and travel insurance providers. By tapping into these varied verticals, Kolet aims to embed its connectivity solutions deeper into the everyday digital touchpoints of modern travelers.
The competitive landscape in Asia-Pacific is already well-established, featuring prominent consumer-facing eSIM providers such as Airalo, Nomad, and Klook, alongside traditional telecommunications operators offering conventional international roaming packages. In response to this crowded market, Kolet has chosen to focus firmly on its business-to-business model. Rather than competing directly for individual consumer attention through high-cost retail acquisition campaigns, Kolet provides seamless technological integrations through hosted websites that require zero technical development work from the partner. Additionally, the company offers robust application programming interface options that allow participating travel brands to maintain their own distinct corporate branding while offering essential data services to their customer base.
Beyond simply providing backend infrastructure, Kolet places a heavy emphasis on optimizing customer conversion rates and offering continuous, hands-on support to its partners throughout the entire booking lifecycle. Ronzano highlighted that conversion optimization represents a core area of expertise for the firm. To achieve this, Kolet works closely with travel brands across multiple customer touchpoints, embedding connectivity offers natively into everything from booking confirmation emails to timely pre-departure reminder messages sent out right before a journey begins.
Furthermore, Kolet provides advanced functionalities for selected partners to ensure travelers remain connected when it matters most. The technology allows customers to access vital partner applications and official websites without drawing from their paid data allowance. This means that even if a passenger completely runs out of cellular data while away from home, they retain the ability to check in for their flights, pull up their digital boarding passes on their mobile devices, or effortlessly rebook a disrupted flight itinerary without incurring unexpected penalties or struggling to find public wireless internet networks.
