Case study: utu

Case studies

Client: utu

Sector: Travel / Fintech / Tax-Free Shopping / Retail / Duty Free

Duration: 2021–2025

Services: International media relations, partnership announcements, executive positioning, thought leadership, events strategy, local agency coordination

Client HQ: Singapore 🇸🇬

About utu

utu is a Singapore-based travel fintech company on a mission to transform the tax-free shopping experience for international tourists. Founded by Ameer and Asad Jumabhoy, utu builds technology that allows travellers to convert VAT refunds into loyalty points, vouchers, and other value-added rewards through partnerships with airlines, duty-free operators, retail groups, and financial platforms. Since its founding, utu has partnered with some of the world’s most recognisable travel and retail brands.

The Challenge

utu entered a PR landscape with a fundamental communication problem: tax-free shopping is genuinely misunderstood and consistently undervalued. The industry was dominated by legacy players offering a process that most travellers found cumbersome and unrewarding. This led utu to create a new category narrative.

The challenge with this was threefold. First, utu needed to build brand credibility from scratch with both trade and business media,. Second, the business was growing across multiple geographies simultaneously, from the UAE and Singapore to Italy and Ireland, requiring localised campaigns that could run in parallel without diluting the core message. And similar to the geographies, utu also navigates across several sectors and therefore media markets.

Our Approach

BUPR’s work with utu spanned two distinct phases: an initial engagement from mid-2021 through early 2022 focused on launch and foundational brand-building, and a re-engagement from August 2023 through mid-2025 during which the company accelerated into its most commercially significant period.

From the outset we steered messaging away from describing utu as merely “seamless” or “efficient” and towards a language of value creation. How utu makes tourist spending more powerful, how it gives retailers a reason to compete rather than lose, and how it erases the artificial line between duty-free and duty-paid shopping. That value, backed by research, was quantified as a “$4 billion VAT refund opportunity” and became central to our comms, strongly resonating with journalists.

We ran a consistent thought leadership programme centred on co-founder Ameer: podcast pitching. The goal was to ensure utu and its co-founder were discoverable, quotable, and credible in the eyes of journalists long before any announcement required them to move fast. But most importantly of all, in the eyes of their most important stakeholders.

Events were treated as integrated PR opportunities rather than standalone activities. For Echelon X in Singapore and Tech in Asia, we prepared full speaker briefings, secured the speaking slots, and organised background briefings with interesting journalists attending the conferences. This allowed a single trip to generate both stage presence and media relationships simultaneously.

Results

Across four years and two engagement phases, BUPR helped utu achieve consistent visibility in the publications that matter most to their investors, partners, and prospective clients. Coverage spanned TechCrunch, Moodie Davitt, PhocusWire, PYMNTS, Tech in Asia, Retail Tech Innovation Hub, Payment Expert, and dozens of trade and regional publications across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

Series B Funding and CardsPal Acquisition

In June 2023, utu closed a US$33 million Series B and simultaneously announced the acquisition of CardsPal, a Singapore-based rewards and payments platform incubated by SC Ventures, the innovation arm of Standard Chartered. The deal was significant on two levels: the funding validated utu’s commercial momentum and gave it the capital to expand into new markets, while the CardsPal acquisition gave utu direct access to a consumer-facing rewards platform in Singapore and a tech stack capable of bridging the VAT refund experience with everyday retail spending. Together, the two announcements positioned utu not just as a tax-free specialist but as a broader player in the travel and loyalty fintech space. The story was picked up by TechCrunch, various technology, travel and retail publications, including the below.

Partnerships: Airlines and Loyalty Programmes

utu’s core commercial proposition required building a critical mass of airline loyalty partnerships to give travellers a meaningful choice of reward destination for their VAT refunds. BUPR managed a sustained series of announcements across carriers in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Europe, coordinating closely with partner comms teams and targeting both travel trade and regional business press in each carrier’s home market.

Partnerships: Duty-Free and Travel Retail

The most commercially significant partnership of the engagement was with Avolta, the world’s largest travel retail operator (parent of Dufry), which launched a VAT refund pilot at Milan airports in June 2024. The announcement was preceded by Avolta’s own CEO naming utu as a growth driver in the company’s Half Year Report, lending the campaign unusual institutional weight. BUPR achieved simultaneous coverage across travel retail, duty-free, and mainstream business media. The headline figure of “+25% more spending power” became the anchor for all editorial coverage.

Partnerships: Retail and Lifestyle

Beyond the travel retail channel, utu pursued partnerships with luxury retail groups and hospitality brands, seeking to extend the VAT refund proposition into city-centre and boutique retail environments. In Italy, BUPR worked with local agency Tellers PR to announce the Coccinelle partnership, securing coverage including a feature in Il Sole24Ore, Italy’s leading financial daily. In the UAE, the launch of tourist refund vouchers at Dubai’s iconic Gold Souk in April 2025 positioned utu as the first to bring a downtown refund programme to one of the world’s most significant jewellery markets.

Il Sole24Ore: Italian media win through partner (2023)
The Moodie Davitt Report: utu launches tourist refund voucher programme at Dubai’s Gold Souk (Apr 2025)
Travel Daily Media: utu partners with Dubai’s iconic Gold Souk to launch a new tourist refund voucher programme (Apr 2025)
Travel and Tour World: Dubai’s Gold Souk Gets a Boost as utu Launches First-Ever Tourist Refund Voucher Program (Apr 2025)
Zawya: Al Maryah Retail Company partners with utu heralding a new chapter for retail tourism in the UAE (Nov 2023)
GCC Business News: The Galleria to offer utu travel privileges (Nov 2023)
Yahoo Finance / PR Newswire Asia: utu further Revolutionizes Global Tax-Free Shopping and reveals World’s First Tax-Free Shopping Rewards in Reward Points with Accor (Jul 2022)

Executive Profiling: Founder Narrative and Business Press

A core strand of the atemporal strategy was establishing the Jumabhoy family narrative as a media-friendly hook for business and lifestyle press. With Ameer and Asad as a father-and-son co-founding duo carrying a legacy Singapore business name into a new tech venture, there was a human story that complemented the product story.

Executive Profiling: Fintech and Startup Trades

A parallel programme targeted the fintech, payments, and startup media that utu’s prospective B2B clients and investors would read. These placements ranged from structured Q&A profiles to reactive startup interview slots, with BUPR providing briefing documents to prepare Ameer for each opportunity. The PaymentExpert StartUp Sessions piece, published in the wake of the CardsPal acquisition, is a particularly strong example: it positioned Ameer as a founder who had successfully executed an M&A deal as a young company, a rare and credible narrative in the fintech space.

PaymentExpert: StartUp Sessions: utu ‘M&A as a young company was a very interesting experience’ (Sep 2023)
BackScoop: Ice Breakers with Ameer Jumabhoy (Oct 2023)
Fintech Profile: Ameer Jumabhoy, Co-Founder of utu (Oct 2024)
Fintec Buzz: FinTech Interview with Ameer Jumabhoy, Co-founder of utu (Mar 2025)

Thought Leadership and Industry Commentary

BUPR supported utu in building a visible point of view on the future of tax-free shopping, placing Ameer’s commentary in broader industry conversations on travel technology, fintech trends, and tourism economics. This included pitching Ameer into expert roundups, drafting and refining a long-form op-ed for LinkedIn on the $4 billion VAT refund opportunity, and securing a dedicated opinion piece on The Moodie Davitt Report in 2023 that argued tax-free refunds could serve as a direct accelerator for duty-free operators’ revenues.

Podcasts

Podcast placements served a dual purpose: building long-form authority in utu’s core verticals and reaching audiences that traditional trade media does not. BUPR mapped relevant shows across travel payments, Southeast Asia tech, and global fintech, and provided comprehensive briefing documents ahead of each recording to align messaging with the episode topic.

Asia Tech Podcast: EP 296 – Ameer Jumabhoy: We Recast Tax-Free Shopping as a Country Reward (Oct 2023) — a wide-ranging conversation on utu’s origins, the disruption thesis, and expansion strategy
BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast: Ameer Jumabhoy profile interview (Feb 2024) — focused on building a fintech business in Southeast Asia’s travel market
TravelPreneur Podcast: The Next Gen of Tax-Free Shopping, with Ameer Jumabhoy at utu (May 2024) — deep-dive into the mechanics of utu’s VAT-to-value model and the travel payments landscape
The CTO Show with Mehmet Gonullu: Ameer Jumabhoy on building technology at the intersection of fintech and travel retail (Oct 2025) — reaching a global senior tech executive audience

Speaking and Events

Echelon X Singapore (May 2024): Fireside chat for Ameer alongside Jeremy Au, covering utu’s growth strategies in the travel industry. BUPR secured the slot, prepared briefing materials, and facilitated media introductions on-site including with the South China Morning Post. The session was subsequently written up by e27: Echelon X: Jeremy Au and Ameer Jumabhoy explore utu’s strategies for sustaining growth in the travel industry
Tech in Asia (Oct 2023): Panel speaking slot for Ameer with organised background briefings with journalists attending the conference, including outreach to DealStreetAsia
Australian Airports Association Retail and Commercial Forum (Jul 2024): Ameer attended the forum in Sydney, with the visit covered by The Moodie Davitt Report: Images of the Day: The Australian Airports Association Retail and Commercial Forum 2024