Klooking Forward

Eric Gnock Fah channeled his nomadic spirit to cofound a travel-booking service now valued at more than $1 billion.

- Rana Wehbe

While traveling in Nepal with a group of friends in 2013, Eric Gnock Fah and Ethan Lin were dismayed to discover they had to pay for almost everything in cash. Even the company operating the paragliding tour they planned was unable to accept credit cards or digital payments, so they had to carry thousands of dollars in cash. “While we had spent a lot of time doing the research and planning the trip, there was no magic button to make the transactions more convenient and hassle-free,” says Gnock Fah.

That experience gave Gnock Fah and Lin, both former investment bankers based in Hong Kong, the idea to create an online service enabling travelers to book and pay for activities in advance. So they scoured LinkedIn for the best software engineer they could find, Bernie Xiaokang Xiong, and with him founded Klook. Gnock Fah, now 32, made Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Asia list in 2017 (his two slightly older cofounders missed the age cutoff).

Klook now has over 1,000 employees in 20 countries. Hong Kong-based Xiong serves as Klook’s chief technology officer. Gnock Fah is chief operating officer and Lin is CEO. The company has already raised over $521 million from investors, including Goldman Sachs, Matrix Partners and Sequoia Capital China. Its latest funding round—$225 million led by Softbank Investment Advisers in April—valued the company at over $1 billion.