This week, I am delighted to welcome Alan Wong, the Chief Technology Officer at Indonesian start up Ula. On this show we explore Alan’s stellar background at Amazon and Booking.com, his fascinating journey into the very current and fast growing world of B2B SME marketplaces and how customer obsessions is at the heart of everything that Ula do. We hear how this incredibly fast growing start up managed to grow throughout the covid pandemic and hear what is in store in the near future. Please find ...
Mar 19, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Season 2Ep. 4
This week, True Partner and MENA lead, Nathalie Spree and I are delighted to welcome Yi Wei Ang, the Chief Product Officer at Talabat to the show. During this incredibly informative deep dive into Product management we cover what product management actually is, how to get into product management, how to hire product managers and what a lot of businesses get wrong when hiring product managers. Please find below the episode summary: 01:15 - Welcome 2:44 - Yi Wei’s journey into Product Management 1...
Feb 18, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Season 2Ep. 3
This week on Emerging Markets Growth leaders I am thrilled to welcome CEO & Cofounder of Lucy, Debbie Watkins. Debbie joins me to share her experiences in the early days of micro finance and social enterprise in SE Asia. We discuss how Microfinance is impacting developing societies, some of the dangers for users and also talk through the underrepresentation and lack of support for female entrepreneurs in financial services. We then discuss how Lucy will go about addressing this gap, before f...
Feb 11, 2021•59 min•Season 2Ep. 2
This week, we are delighted to welcome Akshay Chopra, Head of Innovation & Product Design at Visa, CEMEA. Based in Dubai, Akshay covers the CEMEA Region, which comprises over 90 distinct markets in Central Europe, Middle East & Africa. Akshay joins us to share his unique and fascinating insights of payments and innovation across these regions, with a focus on the Middle East. Please find below the episode summary: 1:16 - Welcome & how have you been? 3:36 - Akshay’s role at Visa 9:10 ...
Feb 04, 2021•47 min•Season 2Ep. 1
This week, we have an end of year bumper special with Ditesh Gathani, Head of Engineering from Grab. Ditesh joined Grab as one of the first few engineers back when it was called MyTeksi. He has grown with the business into a member of the senior leadership team and has run hundreds of technical staff across the core business lines of Grab, more recently heading up the Grab Financials engineering business. Ditesh generously shares a wealth of learnings, insights and some brilliant anecdotes in ho...
Dec 16, 2020•1 hr 31 min•Season 1Ep. 12
This week, in a special international collaborative episode of Southeast Asias growth leaders we welcome Joydeep Sarkar, the Chief Analytics officer of the Singapore & US headquartered mental health research and technology company Holmusk. Joydeep brings his wealth of experience in analytics in healthcare to share with us insights on the groundbreaking advances that Holmusk are making in this field. We discuss how research coupled with the latest technology and data availability is bringing ...
Sep 24, 2020•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 11
This week we welcome Lana Duong, a VP of SE Asia headquartered early stage VC investor Openspace Ventures and holder of the prestigious accolade of Forbes 30 under 30 for Vietnam. Lana shares her fascinating journey from Investment banking into the VC world, we take a deep dive on what investors look for in a startup, and provide advice to founders on what the venture community really look for in early stage companies. We also take a whistle stop tour around SE Asia before discussing her attainm...
Sep 04, 2020•47 min•Season 1Ep. 10
This week we welcome Sam Hall, APAC CEO of Venture Builder Rainmaking. With a strong background in startups, growth and venture building in the corporate world, including founding and working with a number of startups and playing the role of Managing Director for the accelerator Startup bootcamp, Sam joins us to discuss the role that Venture builders like Rainmaking play in the corporate world, the challenges that large companies face in innovating, and the role that corporates can play in disru...
Aug 20, 2020•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 9
This week we welcome Hal Bosher to the show. Hal is the Chairman of Board of Wave Money in Myanmar, an Advisor to the Board of Yoma Bank and a Board Director of Delta Capital Myanmar, the countries largest private equity fund. Hal was the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Yoma Bank until September 2019 where he led Yoma Bank’s transformation for seven years after moving to Yangon in 2012. While at Yoma Bank Hal co-founded Wave Money, Myanmar’s largest mobile money provider, which, in the spring o...
Aug 13, 2020•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 8
This week we welcome Adrian Gunadi to the show. Adrian is the CEO of Indonesian fintech startup Investree and is also the Chairman for the Fintech Lending Association of Indonesia. After an 18 year career in foreign and local banking, with organisations including Citi, Standard Chartered and PT Bank Muamalat Indonesia, he embarked on his entrepreneurial journey and launched Investree. During this insightful session we detail his journey of growth with Investree, covering the social impact that I...
Jul 23, 2020•1 hr 15 min•Season 1Ep. 7
This week we welcome Norman Sason to the show. Norman is the CTO of Mobile Payments platform Dana Indonesia. Norman brings 20 years of experience from boot strapping a startup, to working in one of the worlds largest technology companies, to now running the huge technical organization powering Dana.id. During this session we detail his journey from his background in Physics & Mathematics through to a dive into the technical challenges of growing a business to 40m users whilst also growing th...
Jul 16, 2020•58 min•Season 1Ep. 6
This week we welcome Sathya Kalyanasundaram to the show. Sathya is the India Country Head and Managing Director for Experian, the world’s leading global information services company. He joins us for a special episode taking a deep dive into the current themes surrounding fintech in India, from the regulators to the banks and through to the early stage disruptors. Sathya brings with him over 20 years of experience from Consulting, Finance and FinTech leadership roles. In his current role, he is r...
Jul 10, 2020•1 hr 15 min•Season 1Ep. 5
We welcome Axel Winter to the show. Axel is the CTO of Thai giant Central Group, where he has been responsible for the growth and development of their global industry leading eCommerce and Omnichannel offerings. He has extensive experience in SE Asia and Europe in consulting, banking and eCommerce, having worked for Deloitte, Accenture, GE and Standard Chartered Bank. Now leading a 250 person organisation, which he grew from scratch as employee #1, Axel joins us for a fun and insightful session ...
Jul 02, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 4
In part 2 of this 2 episode, we welcome back our guests Ollie Wood (Head of Talent, Golden Gate Ventures), Christiaan Ballard (Talent Acquistion Manager, B Capital Group) and Rachel Ng (Chief of Staff, Wavemaker Partners). In Part 1 we discussed the common themes encountered by businesses going through growth, including struggles of hiring the right people. Part 2 builds on this to cover incorporating diversity into the DNA of a business and gives some key summaries of what founders should reall...
Jun 25, 2020•45 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Across this 2 episode bumper edition on SE Asia Growth leaders with True we welcome 3 leading lights in the VC talent & organisation space: Ollie Wood (Head of Talent, Golden Gate Ventures), Christiaan Ballard (Talent Acquistion Manager, B Capital Group) and Rachel Ng (Chief of Staff, Wavemaker Partners). In Part 1 we discuss the common themes encountered by businesses going through growth, including struggles of hiring the right people. Part 2 covers how to build diversity into the DNA of a...
Jun 18, 2020•54 min•Season 1Ep. 3
We welcome Michele Ferrario, CEO and Cofounder of Singapore based Robo-Advisory Stashaway. In this episode we talk about his fascinating journey from top 3 management consultancy, through PE into Consumer internet businesses. Michele is responsible for the launch and growth of such businesses as Rocket Internet in Italy, Pakistan eCommerce giant Daraz, SEA Fashion e-retailer Zalora and his most recent venture: Stashaway. We cover the importance of people, setting the right culture early on, sett...
Jun 05, 2020•52 min•Season 1Ep. 2
We welcome Sudh Ahuja from enterprise recruitment disruptor Impress.ai. In this episode we cover challenges and experiences of growing a tech start up in Singapore, plus gain some fascinating insights into the use of AI in the enterprise recruitment and onboarding space. We get Sudh's views on the importance of leadership values, as well as talk about how to make the onboarding process more objective and competency based.
May 28, 2020•56 min•Season 1Ep. 1
