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The Malaysia-based startup wowed the judges with its innovative cloud-based booking and inventory management system for hotels

Hotel e-commerce solutions provider Softinn has been crowned the TOP100 competition at the Echelon Asia Summit 2016 held in Singapore EXPO.

The Malaysia-based startup will be awarded the e27 Platinum Pass, which grants full access to Echelon Conferences from 2016 to 2017. In addition, it will have direct exposure and access to regional tech media networks, extensive access to regional and global markets, and will get the opportunity to connect with a range of regional angel networks and industry experts.

“I was surprised, I didn’t expect this, I’m really excited,” Softinn Founder JeeShen Lee said.

When asked why he thought he won, he said: “I think it’s because we have a proven our model…we didn’t rush into scaling. We converted one hotel by one hotel. We took steps to validate our model and market entry. Moving forward, we are going to scale in Malaysia and then look into strategic partnerships to expand into Indonesia and Vietnam.”

Lee started Softinn as a website development project for local hotels, and from then it has grown into a hotel e-commerce platform with a cloud-based booking and inventory management system.

Softinn currently powers over 500 hotels, vacation houses, BnBs, home-stays and even small theme parks across Malaysia. To date, it has transacted over 5,652 bookings worth over US$575,000. It also has partnerships with TripAdvisor and Flipkey.

In March 2016, Softinn raised an undisclosed pre-Series A round.

Softinn competed with ten other startups in the final leg of the TOP100 Startup Search qualifiers, which began in March this year. They hailed from all over Asia (including Central Asia) and spread across several verticals, including SaaS, logistics, e-commerce, and medtech/healthcare solutions. They are:

1. Giztix – Thailand-based logistics marketplace.
2. LUXROBO – Korea-based Robotics of Things (ROT) platform.
3. Giftsensor – Kazakhstan-based gift advisory service marketplace.
4. FlySpaces – Philippines-based online search and booking engine for commercial spaces.
5. Simgo – Singapore-based cloud-based virtual sim provider.
6. HelloWings – Taiwan-based cross-budget airlines visualised comparator.
7. Hoozing – Vietnam-based house rental marketplace.
8. LongGood – Taiwan-based respiratory rehabilitation platform.
9. Nataproperty – Indonesia-based property marketplace.
10. Seekster – Thailand-based hyperlocal service marketplace.

The competition was presided over by five industry veterans within Asia’s startup ecosystem. They were:

1. Takashi Sano, Venture Partner, Global Brain
2. Plern Tee Suraphongchai, Partner, Venturra Capital
3. Carmen Yuen, Investment Director, Vertex Ventures
4. Yong Soo Ping, 2nd Vice President, Walden International
5. Koichi Saito, General Partner, KK Fund

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The runner-ups did not walk away empty-handed though. The rest of the startups won a pair of boxing gloves each, specially labelled with the e27 logo.

Singapore’s Simgo also won an award presented by Institute of Information Industry, Taiwan. It will receive a sponsored roundtrip ticket to Taipei, and get to exhibit and pitch at the IDEAS@APEC.

The two-day Echelon Asia 2016 was sponsored by Samruk Kazyna, Braintree, Global Brain, IBM, FinLab, Akamai and Appier.

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