Name: MileWise
Quick Pitch: Calculates your miles and points to help you find the best flight.
Genius Idea: MileWise is a search engine designed for the frequent flier in mind. Unlike most flight search engines however, which only let you rank flights by price, duration or number of stops, MileWise factors in airline miles as well as hotel and credit card points to help you find the flight that offers the most value.
The site keeps track of your rewards programs in one place, and then uses that information when conducting flight searches. Flight information is pulled from several sources, including Orbitz, Everbread and directly from airlines. 350 rewards programs are supported at this time.
MileWise was co-founded by Vinay Pulim, a former senior software engineer at Hunch, and Sanjay Kothari, previously of Boston Consulting Group. Kothari says he used to spend hours calculating the value of frequent flier miles and hotel and credit card points before booking a flight, which inspired him to pair up with Pulim. The two founders, who launched MileWise publicly in August, raised $1.5 million in debt funding in 2010.
Kothari says the team is currently working to enhancing its current search product by adding flexible date search and support for more airlines and credit card programs, among other things. The startup also plans to release apps for the iPhone, iPad and Android in the near future.
Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark
