Our Story

Holo-mate was born from the real-world experiences of its founders, shaped by years of firsthand insight into the challenges of the hospitality industry and a shared belief that technology can make human experiences better.

The idea first took root when Ishan Jha, Holo-mate’s CEO, worked as a zero-hour contract waiter in London between 2017 and 2019. As an immigrant student, he quickly discovered that language wasn’t the hardest part of the job — clearly explaining menus, ingredients, and recommendations to diners was a daily challenge. Years later, as a customer, he noticed the same issues still persisted: untrained staff, language barriers, and long wait times were all too common. On one particularly busy evening in 2024, it took 20 minutes to get a waiter’s attention and nearly two hours for food to arrive — a frustrating reminder that the dining experience was broken.

Ishan’s entrepreneurial journey began in 2013 and led to the creation of Travel Hands in 2020, a UK-based social startup connecting visually impaired people with volunteers for guided walks. Building and scaling that venture taught him how empathy, service design, and user-focused innovation can create real-world impact — principles that now underpin Holomate’s mission.

Joining him is Henrique Fernandes, Holo-mate’s CTO and a seasoned technologist with deep expertise in holographic and interactive experiences. As the founder of Illusio, Henrique has spent years developing cutting-edge solutions for global brands, mastering hardware prototyping, hologram development, and AI-driven interaction.

United by a shared vision, Ishan and Henrique combined their complementary skills — service design and technical innovation — to solve one of hospitality’s biggest challenges: labour shortages and rising costs that limit the quality of customer experiences.

Holo-mate is more than a startup. It is the result of two entrepreneurial journeys coming together to make technology more human and to reimagine how people experience everyday services — starting with the future of dining.