The encyclopedia · Strategy & Leadership · Strategic decision · 2012–2019
Tink Labs raised $170M as Hong Kong's first unicorn, then collapsed in 2019
Tink Labs put Handy phones in 600,000 hotel rooms, raised $170M, hit a $1.5B valuation — and shut down in 2019 after burning it all.
Tink Labs · Handy · 2012
What happened
In 2012, 20-year-old University of Chicago dropout Terence Kwok founded Tink Labs in Hong Kong after a $900 roaming bill. The company put free-to-use 'Handy' smartphones in hotel rooms: guests got free calls and internet, hotels got upsell and guest-data channels. By 2016 it had 1 million monthly users across 100+ hotels and dominated over half the Hong Kong and Singapore market.
The growth story drew global capital. Tink Labs raised more than $170 million from FIH Mobile (Foxconn's subsidiary), Sinovation Ventures, Meitu's founder, and later SoftBank's mobile unit in a Japanese joint venture. In 2018 the company was valued at $1.5 billion — Hong Kong's first unicorn — with Handy devices in 600,000 hotel rooms across 82 countries, including Hyatt, InterContinental, and Shangri-La.
The model collapsed in 2019. Cheap roaming plans, the rise of eSIM, and free hotel Wi-Fi had made the core promise — escaping expensive connectivity — obsolete. The hardware-dependent business had high costs and revenue capped by the number of rooms. On 2 July 2019 employees were told the company would split in a restructuring; on 11 July services were cut in most markets; on 1 August Tink Labs shut down, laying off 80% of staff. More than 100 employees across EMEA never received their July salaries.
Why it happened
- The core value proposition — escape expensive roaming — evaporated as roaming prices fell, free hotel Wi-Fi spread, and eSIM arrived; Tink Labs did not pivot in time
- Hardware-dependent unit economics meant costs scaled with rooms while revenue stayed capped, and the business never approached profitability
- Venture-scale expansion — from 1 million users to 82 countries on $170M — spread the company across markets before any of them were proven
- The 2019 'split into two entities' restructuring was a retreat, not a plan: markets were cut within days and employees were left unpaid
The lesson
A hardware business built on a pain point that technology is already solving has an expiry date, and venture capital accelerates the burn without removing it.
Aftermath
Tink Labs' remaining Hong Kong and Singapore hotel contracts were reassigned to Blockone Limited, and the company's website redirected to 'hi Inc.'. Terence Kwok resurfaced in 2024 as co-founder of Humanity Protocol, a Web3 identity company. More than 100 former employees across EMEA were never paid their July 2019 salaries.
Sources
- Tink Labs ceases Handy smartphone service in nearly all markets — SCMP, August 2019
- Hong Kong's first unicorn Tink Labs has closed down — Next Unicorn Ventures, August 2019
- Tink Labs ceases Handy smartphone service in most markets — TTG Asia, August 2019
- Handy phones' parent Tink Labs wound down — Serviced Apartment News, 2019
- Tink Labs — Failory failure cemetery
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