Winner will be given assistance to qualify for a S$50,000 grant for protoyping the idea.

Due to popular demand, the WIT Start-Up Pitch will make a re-appearance this year. This time, the panel of investor judges will include two entrepreneurs/investors who've been through the school of hard knocks themselves.

Lim Kim Hai, Executive Chairman of Regional Express Airlines, Australia and Dennis Melka, co-founder of Tune Hotels, Malaysia, have confirmed their participation in the panel, that will once again be chaired by Bill Liu, chairman of Stream Global, an investment and consultancy company in the ICT and Digital Media space. Liu will help WIT organise the competition.

Lim worked for 10 years as a Defence Specialist Engineer in the Singapore civil service before he decided to start up his own businesses. Today, he has an extensive portfolio of investment and has business interests in many countries, including a biomedical company, Link Biotechnologies, and WooWorld, a supplier of online and mobile games to telecommunications companies in China, Japan and South-east Asia.

Regional Express Airlines, called REX for short, is Australia's largest independent regional airline, and won Regional Airline of the Year at the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) Awards of Excellence in 2007 and 2008. Lim is known for speaking his mind and calling a spade, well, a spade.

Melka runs East Pacific Capital Pte Ltd, a venture capitalist based in Singapore, and is one of the founders of Tune Hotels, the economy limited service hotel brand owned by Air Asia. Melka has founded companies in hospitality, financial services, agriculture, software development and sustainable forestry.

In March, he launched the Dean's Distinguished Lecture Series at the Cornell Nanyang Institute of Hospitality Management (CNI) and spoke to students about the drive, determination, sheer will and hands-on approach that's required to make any business venture work.

"If you have a good idea and are willing to dedicate yourself to it, money will find you, or you will find money," he said, and illustrated this by saying that in one venture, he and a business partner approached 74 potential investors before the 75th investor, finally said "yes".

The WIT Start-Up Pitch is aimed at unearthing and discovering good ideas in the online travel space in Asia Pacific. Last year, three finalists, Conference Bay, Entrip and Tripfilms, pitched their ideas in five minutes each and the investor judges' choice was Tripfilms, a video social networking site.

Said Liu, "I hope we will have companies who are willing to use this platform to showcase their ideas and tell the world about them, even if they are wacky. Actually, often times the wacky ideas with a sound business plan are the ones that will ultimately win."

The WIT Start-Up Pitch is open to start-up companies, with less than three years from start-up, and who are looking to move their business to the next level.

"We hope to find some new ideas that will serve the needs of the industry – hopefully not just another portal but someone with the right application to address the pain points and using technology including the web to deliver it."

The winner will be given assistance by Stream Global to position themselves to receive a Singapore government grant worth S$50,000 in the Interactive Digital Media space. "The condition is that the company has to have operations in Singapore."

Three finalists will be chosen to pitch in WIT, The Main Event. Other entries who do not make the final three will be given another platform to pitch their ideas and get them "workshopped" by a panel of advisors in the WIT Ideas Lab on October 22-23, running alongside ITB Asia.

Those interested in entering the WIT Start-Up Pitch 2009 can email admin@webintravel.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it for more information.