Habitap Founder Franklin Tang Shows Us A Smarter Way To Live

Disruptor, risk taker and one of Singapore’s technology trailblazers, Franklin Tang is determined to build a community where smart and seamless living is available to all

- Alfieyah Abdullah

SMART PHONES ARE GETTING SMARTER, artificial intelligence is now taught in primary school, and robots are helping us clean our dishes at hawker centres. We were never prepped to understand the future beyond the Internet. We just had to grow into it. Yet, chief executive officer and founder of Habitap Franklin Tang has been questioning smart living since the Singapore Smart Nation initiative in 2014.

Simultaneously, Tang was working for Philip Tang & Sons, co-building a prototype of a smart home and faced the challenge of importing its equipment. Potentially, the project was a promising one, with many smart home products available globally. However, he soon realised that said products were either poorly integrated and not user-friendly or required homeowners to be technologically savvy.

Tang couldn’t see how such products would encourage Singaporeans to willingly incorporate smart technology into their lives despite the Smart Nation initiative encouraging otherwise. It was in that moment he had the idea to build an intuitive platform that would make smart living a more seamless user experience. That turning point in his life kickstarted Habitap-knowing that his idea of an integrated mobile app which comprises an all-in-one smart home controller, a smart community platform and a lifestyle gateway-could imaginably change the way Singaporeans lived life.