OwlTing, a Taiwan-based startup engaged in blockchain applications, aims to increase business by 50-100 times from the current level in 5-7 years, with new FinTech services to be the major driving force, according to company founder and CEO Darren Wang.
OwlTing has developed solutions for own business operation: OwlNest, a hotel management platform; OwlTing Blochchain Services that helps enterprises optimize operations; OwlTing Market, an e-commerce platform for promoting Taiwanese fruits and organic foods in the international market; OwlTing Experience, a search engine for exploring various tourism itineraries around the world; OwlJourney, a one-stop travel service platform for tourists to book hotels; OwlStay that provides tourists with story-like in-depth information about hotels and consulting services for hospitality operators; and OwlNews, a news hub featuring transparency and trust in news.
Wang told Digitimes in a recent interview that OwlNest capitalizes on bloackchain-based immutability of data to avoid duplication of data entries, preventing overbooking of hotel rooms, and such a system can also be used in airline operators' management for flight ticket.
He said that OwlTing's business planning is comprehensive, building up brand reputation by virtue of ecosystems.
"I like to make deep insight into different industries to mine for potential demand, find trends of development for figuring out new business models. For example, OwlTing fuses many aspects of tourism industry into its business operation, including homestay facilities, hotels, in-depth tourism itineraries, hotel booking and management," said Wang.
In the future, OwlTing aims to provide a blockchain-based architecture for using IoT sensing in FinTech services, he said.
Many companies or individuals engaged in blockchain are motivated by the opportunity of making quick money via trading virtual currencies, and this has no real contribution to the world, said Wang. OwlTing has been developing a global payment platform across e-commerce platforms for e-commerce transactions, and will launch the platform later in 2021, he said, adding the platform is expected to become a major source of business growth for OwlTing.
Wang has also invested in others' blockchain startup businesses.
"The success of startup businesses hinges on personal characteristics of their founders. Many venture capital firms, banks and high-tech enterprises in Taiwan are unwilling to invest in blockchain startups because they think that blockchain businesses are difficult to make money," Wang said. "But I have invested in several blockchain startup businesses and some of them are going well such as MaiCoin and CoolBitX."
OwlTing founder and CEO Darren Wang
Photo: Sammi Huang, Digitimes, May 2021