NAME OF STARTUP: Buk Technology
FOUNDED IN (Year): 2022
FOUNDER’S NAME: Arul Prakash
THE IDEA: What is the problem being solved by your startup / business?:
About 15% of all hotel bookings are cancelled. In most cases, the traveler loses money due to the friction in the travel ecosystem and lack of transparency. Hotels lose operational visibility due to cancellations and sometimes avoidable revenue loss as well.
The Crypto traveler and Digital nomad of today, wants flexibility and freedom of choice, while current booking journeys are penalising for this choice of his. And even when he cancels, he has to wait for 2-6 days for the refunds to get processed.
Buk via tokenization will enable the traveler to resell his booking, in way similar to reslling of NFTs of digital collectible. Imagine OpenSea+ Expedia merged into a single platform. Where Travelers can book hotels(just as Expedia), pay via cryptocurrency, resell the room in a trustless way(just as OpenSea) and/or also claim on-chain instant refund in case of cancellations.
THE FOUNDER’S STORY: When and how did you come up with the idea for the business?:
Arul Prakash, the founder and CEO, has been working with large enterprise systems for consumer facing industries all through my career across strategy and technology consulting.
Been in the blockchain space for the last 5 years, leading Polytrade finance – A defi based platform for the last one year and recently founded Buk.technology which is building solutions for the hotel industry using the strength of blockchain.
Nikhil K, CTO, has vast experience in Enterprise technology, Enterprise architecture and Travel TEchnology. As part of his earlier stint with KPMG consulting, he has worked with technology leadership across different companies across different industries. And has been heading TripDarwin.com for last 7 years in the travel tech space handling all industry integrations.
WHO IS THE CUSTOMER: What is the typical profile of your target customer? Where would they be located?:
Blockchain, Web3, Hospitality, Travel, Cryptocurrency, Infrastructure, dApps
LESSONS TO SHARE: What 3 key lessons from your startup journey you’d like to share with aspiring entrepreneurs?:
Buk Technology is an ecosystem, focused on building a secondary marketplace for hotel room bookings, where hotel rooms can be bought, distributed, sold and resold just as any other collectible NFT. This means as an end user, you will no longer need to pay a cancellation fee in case you are not able to stay at a hotel, you can resell your booking in an open NFT marketplace just like OpenSea or Rarible. And every time a hotel room is traded, the hotel also earns a secondary commission. All cancellations and refunds now happen on chain and immediately.
HQ City: Delaware, USA
Website URL: https://buk.Technology
Number of Employees: 5-25
Connect On Twitter: @buktrips
