NIKKEI FORUM 'INNOVATIVE ASIA'

As Asia continues to build and gather some of the world's most successful tech companies, transforming the lives of billions of people, the Nikkei Forum “Innovative Asia” is back in its second year, to take a deeper look at the tech revolution sweeping this continent. This time, we invited movers and shakers in the region to discuss topics such as “Will Asia be able to create its own GAFA-equivalent digital-platform giants amid the China-US race for tech supremacy?”, “Where are the hot spots of technology and disruption?", or "Which regions or cities are winning the race to fascinate talents and international capital?”.

OUTLINE

Title
NIKKEI FORUM "INNOVATIVE ASIA"
Date and Time
Thursday, January 16, 2020
13:30-17:00(Door Open 12:30)
Venue
SGX Auditorium

(2 Shenton Way, SGX Centre 1, Level 2)

Organizer
Nikkei Inc.
Sponsors
Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation ABeam Consulting Ltd.
Offical Media
Nikkei Asian Review
Media Partner
Financial Times
Knowledge Partner
INSEAD
Supporter
Singapore Exchange Limited.
Registration Fee
SGD600 (Tax included)

REGISTRATION

AGENDA

(as of December 25, 2019)
*Honorifics and titles omitted, names in no particular order.
**Please be advised that agenda, speakers, presentation themes are subject to change.

Opening
Keynote Speech
Keynote Speech

  • Break

Panel 1Beyond China:The pivot to India and Southeast Asia

  • Break

Panel 2Singapore as a tech-hub and its role going forward
Closing Session

  • Narayan Pant

    Professor of Management Practice
    The Raoul de Vitry d'Avaucourt Chaired Professor of Leadership Development, INSEAD

  • Networking

INQUIRY

NIKKEI FORUM "INNOVATIVE ASIA" Secretariat
CONTACT ADDRESS

ia2020@creative-net.co.jp

REGISTRATION

Patrick Cao

Patrick Cao

President, Tokopedia

Patrick Cao holds the title of President at Tokopedia, overseeing the CFO Office, Financial Technology business and global partnerships.
Prior to Tokopedia, Patrick was a Partner at Formation Group where he focused on investments in growth-stage technology and consumer companies. Patrick was previously an Executive Director at UBS Investment Bank covering the consumer, industrials, technology and sponsors sectors.
Patrick received a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from Carnegie Mellon University.

close

Chih-Han Yu

Chih-Han Yu

CEO and Co-Founder, Appier

Chih-Han Yu is CEO and co-founder of Appier, a leading AI company whose mission is to help enterprises solve their most challenging business problems with AI-powered platforms.
Under his leadership, Appier has grown from a 4-person living room startup to a multinational leading AI company in Asia, recognised as one of the top 50 revolutionary AI companies by Fortune Magazine.

In 2016, Yu was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, making Appier the only Asian AI company to make the list. Prior to Appier, Yu has authored dozens of research articles in the field of AI, robotics and machine learning.
In 2010, he obtained his Ph.D. degree in AI from Harvard University, where his doctoral thesis was nominated as the best thesis of the year in the field of multi-agent AI. Prior to Harvard, Yu earned his master's degree from Stanford’s AI Lab, where he made fundamental contributions in applying machine learning to autonomous robots such as four-legged robots and self-driving vehicles.

close

James Kynge

James Kynge

Editor, Tech Scroll Asia / Global China Editor, FT

James Kynge is Global China Editor at the Financial Times and an editor of Tech Scroll Asia, based in Hong Kong.
He reports on China's growing global influence, including in tech.
He has reported from all parts of Asia during a career of more than 25 years.
His award-winning book "China Shakes the World" was an international bestseller.

close

Liu Genping

Liu Genping

Partner, Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India

Genping joined Vertex in 2010. He covers Southeast Asia on industry sectors including internet/mobile and enabling technologies.

Genping has a diversified set of experience working with startups and multinational companies in various sectors including internet, electronics (batteries), telecom and investment banking. He started his career as a product manager role at Motorola Electronics Singapore.

Genping holds a Bachelor of Computer Engineering from Nanyang Technological University Singapore and a MBA from University of California – Los Angeles.

close

Chua Kee Lock

Chua Kee Lock

CEO, Vertex Holdings

CHUA Kee Lock is CEO of Vertex Holdings (“VH”), a Singapore-headquartered venture capital investment holding company.

Vertex Group is a global venture capital network comprising four early stage technologyfocused funds (Vertex Ventures China, Vertex Ventures Israel, Vertex Ventures US, Vertex Ventures SEA & India), an early stage healthcare-focused fund (Vertex Ventures HC) and a growth stage fund (Vertex Growth).
Each of these funds are managed by independent and separate General Partnerships and investment teams, with VH providing anchor funding alongside significant 3rd party capital commitments. Mr. Chua is concurrently Managing Partner of Vertex Ventures SEA & India as well as Chairman of Vertex Growth Fund.

Prior to this, he held senior positions in Biosensors International Group, Ltd., a developer/manufacturer of medical devices, Walden International, a US-headquartered venture capital firm, NatSteel Ltd., a Singapore industrial products company, and Intraco Ltd., a Singapore-listed trading/distribution company. Mr. Chua co-founded MediaRing, provider of voice-over-internet, which later listed on Singapore’s stock exchange.
He currently serves on the boards of several companies, including Yongmao, a Singapore public-listed company.

Mr. Chua graduated with a Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Wisconsin and a M.Sc. degree from Stanford University.

close

Joji Thomas Philip

Joji Thomas Philip

Founder and Editor in Chief, DealStreetAsia

Joji is the Founder & Editor-in-Chief of DealStreetAsia, a Singapore-headquartered financial news platform tracking deal activity in Asia, including private equity, venture capital activity, deal flows, initial public offers, investments, fund-raising and startups.
The company has reporters across Southeast Asia, India and HK. (In May 2019, Nikkei announced it has picked up a controlling stake in DealStreetasia).
Joji is a 24×7 information enthusiast and leads a pan-Asia team.
Prior to this, he was among the most prolific journalists in India, and chronicled the communications/telecoms segment, breaking some of the biggest stories in these sectors, during his tenure at The Economic Times, and Business Standard.
From 2013, he has also been writing for Mint, a financial daily from HT Media Ltd. Joji won the Business Standard-Seema Nazareth Award for Excellence in Journalism in March 2006.

close

Andre Soelistyo

Andre Soelistyo

Co-CEO, Gojek

Since joining Gojek in 2015, Andre has played a pivotal role in laying a solid foundation for Gojek’s rapid growth. He has overseen over US$4bn of fundraising, which attracted key investors such as Google, Tencent, Astra, KKR and Warburg Pincus. He has also laid the foundation for the company’s business strategy for long term sustainability.

As the Co-CEO, Andre leads all corporate functions and the management of capital allocation, international expansion and the platform’s payments and financial services businesses.

Prior to joining Gojek, Andre was the Executive Director for Northstar Group - a leading Southeast Asia private equity fund.
He was previously the Head of Corporate Finance at one of Indonesia’s largest coal mining contractors, PT Delta Dunia Makmur Tbk.

Andre received his Bachelor of Science from the University of Technology Sydney in 2005.
During his term, he was also the Head of the Indonesian Students Association in Australia, for the state of New South Wales.

close

Seah Kian Wee

Seah Kian Wee

CEO and Managing Director, UOB Venture Management

Kian-Wee joined UOBVM in 1997.
As Managing Director, he is responsible for the overall profit and loss, fund administration, investment and divestment.
He has served on the board and Audit/Compensation/Nominating committees of publicly listed companies such as Wuxi Pharmatech (NYSE), China Precision Technology (SGX) and Sunvic Chemical (SGX) among others. Prior to joining UOBVM, Kian-Wee has held the positions of engineer, marketing manager, general manager and managing director of multi-national companies and has been based in Malaysia, USA and China in addition to Singapore.
Kian-Wee holds an Executive MBA from Tsinghua University in Beijing, a Master of Science (Electrical Engineering) from University of California, Los Angeles (“UCLA”), and a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering (Honours) from the National University of Singapore. In addition, he has received a training certificate for Independent Director of Public Company from The Securities Association of China and Tsinghua University. He is a CFA charterholder.

close

Kentaro Kawabe

Kentaro Kawabe

President and CEO, Z Holdings (President and CEO, Yahoo Japan)

Kentaro Kawabe was born in 1974 in Tokyo, and graduated from Aoyama Gakuin University, Faculty of Law.
While still at University he established Dennotai Corporation in 1995 and was appointed CEO in 1999. In 1999, he also established PIM Corporation.

He joined Yahoo Japan Corporation in 2000 as a result of a merger of Yahoo Japan Corporation and PIM Corporation, and was appointed as a producer of “Yahoo! Mobile”. In2006, he founded “Yahoo! Politics for All (Minnano-Seiji)” as a non-profitable project to celebrate Yahoo! JAPAN’s 10th Anniversary. He became responsible for “Yahoo! News” in 2007. He was appointed President and Representative Director of GYAO Corporation in 2009 and restructured its business. In 2012, he was appointed Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Yahoo Japan Corporation. He was appointed Chief Executive Officer in April 2018 and President and Representative Director, President Corporate Officer, Chief Executive Officer in June 2018 (current post). In September 2018, he was appointed Board Director, SoftBank Corp. (current post). He assumed the current post in Z Holdings Corporation in October 2019, due to Yahoo Japan Corporation’s transition to a holding company structure.

close

Gaurav Gupta

Gaurav Gupta

Founder and COO, Zomato

Gaurav Gupta is the Founder & Chief Operating Officer at Zomato.
Gaurav has been at the forefront of building Zomato, one of the largest restaurant search & discovery and food transaction platform globally, which drives transactions between users and restaurants across multiple markets - India, ME, SE Asia and ANZ.
Zomato achieves this objective by operating across three business segments - 1. Food delivery (Online Food Ordering), 2. Dining out (Subscription Program, Table Reservations) and 3. Enablers (Raw material supply to restaurants, Kitchen Hygiene Ratings, Cloud Kitchens) which also help in growing the restaurant ecosystem.

Prior to Zomato, Gaurav was a Senior Principal with A.T. Kearney in consumer industries and retail space.
There, he led large-scale, transformational engagements and built expertise across multiple areas: new business launch, category performance improvement, sales enhancement, profitability improvement and business due diligence.

Gaurav holds an engineering degree from IIT-Delhi and an MBA from IIM-Calcutta.

close

Paul Ng

Paul Ng

Senior Vice President, Investments, EDBI

Paul is Senior Vice President, Investments, at EDBI responsible for global and regional technological investments. EDBI is a Singapore-based global investor in select high growth technology sectors ranging from Information & Communication Technology (ICT), Emerging Technology (ET), Healthcare (HC) and other strategic industries.

Prior, he was from the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC) investing in public consumer companies in non-Asian emerging markets. Paul started his career in information technology, managing and executing IT infrastructure projects in areas of security, network and systems management. He is a CFA charter holder, holds a MSc in Wealth Management from the Singapore Management University, as well as a 1st Class Honours Degree in Electrical Engineering from the National University of Singapore.

close

Abheek Anand

Abheek Anand

Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India

Abheek is a Managing Director with Sequoia Capital India, based in Singapore. He focuses on range of sectors, including fintech, education and consumer internet, across Southeast Asia.
Prior to joining Sequoia, he was a product manager at Facebook in Menlo Park, where he led teams building various advertising products for the company. Previously Abheek was co-founder and CEO of Tagtile, a technology startup in San Francisco that was acquired at Facebook.
Abheek has a B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Delhi, an MSCS from the University of Maryland and an MBA from Stanford University.

close

Soo Boon Koh

Soo Boon Koh

Founding Managing Partner, iGlobe Partners

Professional Experience

Soo Boon founded iGlobe in December 1999 when venture capital (VC) was experiencing the onset of globalisation. As a veteran in the global VC industry with a specialisation in technology investing, she has achieved consistent top-quartile fund return for her investments. Working alongside prominent VCs such as Sequoia Capital, IVP, RRE, Tencent and Qualcomm Ventures, she has since established herself as a prominent leader in the investing community.

Soo Boon led some of the notable exits, including u-blox AG (SWX: UBXN), Telenav Inc. (NASDAQ: TNAV), Celestry Inc. (sold to Cadence), Aicent Inc. (acquired by TA Associates) and Anacle Systems Ltd (HKGEM: 8353) Currently, Soo Boon serves as board observer of several VC-backed companies based in San Francisco. This includes Nerdwallet Inc., Matterport Inc as well as Twist Bioscience Inc. Soo Boon is also a board member of The Great Room (Singapore) and Reach Robotics (Bristol) .

Prior to founding iGlobe, she held senior management positions in Vertex Management Inc. (previously the venture capital arm of Singapore Technologies and now under Temasek Holdings). Soo Boon played a critical role in establishing the operations of Vertex, based in Redwood City in 1988 and ran the operation until October 1996 when she set up Vertex Europe based in London. During that period , she was closely associated with several companies based in Silicon Valley, such as Lattice Semiconductor, Quick Logic, Pie(merged with Quickturn), Premisys Còmmunications, Proxim Inc.., and European companies e.g. SCM Microsystems (Germany ), Brokat (Germany) , Gemplus (France ) and ActivCard(France) etc.

Soo Boon‘s ability to nurture founders and connect syndication coinvestors across continents came from her experience in DBS early in her career. Her clients range come from a range of industries, including electronics, financial services and petrochemical. With this experience, she has built a network of trusted partners whom she rode through multiple business cycles with.

Additional achievements

It is with her experience that she is inspired to support women leaders in tech and actively promote board diversity especially in tech companies. In 2009, she was appointed the Council Member of the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce & Industry (SCCCI). She also held the position of the Chairwoman of SCCCI’s Career Women Group from 2009 to 2016. She is currently a member of the Singapore chapter of Women Corporate Directors and the International Women Forum, where she mentors professional women on private and public boards.

It is therefore no surprise that she was given the “Honorary Outstanding Women Award” by HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn in celebration of Thai Women’s Day in Honor of Her Majesty Queen Sirikit on 1st Aug 2016.

She is currently a Fellow of the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS), where she provides students with guidance and serves as a partner in SUSS’ industry outreach and research activities.

With her strong experience in technology investment, she can speak on topics such as deal sourcing and women in tech.

close

Narayan Pant

Narayan Pant

Professor of Management Practice
The Raoul de Vitry d'Avaucourt Chaired Professor of Leadership Development, INSEAD

Narayan spends much of his time working with senior leaders to improve leadership judgment. In his view, leadership marks itself at the fulcrum of decision – when leaders make choices. Consequently, supporting leaders in the moment of decision has to be a critical part of leadership development. Narayan Pant directs the senior leadership programme, LEAP: Leadership Excellence through Awareness and Practice.

Narayan began his academic career, writing and teaching in Strategy. He taught strategy and policy at New York University's Stern School, and the business faculties of the University of Alberta (Canada) and the National University of Singapore. He published in areas including forecasting, value conflicts, strategic choice, organizational structure and culture, and other strategy related areas. He has also presented papers at academic conferences such as The Academy of Management, The Strategic Management Society and ORSA/TIMS.

Increasingly, Narayan found himself working with Senior Management Teams to improve strategy development and execution in their teams. Obstacles rarely emerged from teams being unable to determine the right course of action; rather, they came from teams being unable to work successfully toward common goals. This observation led Narayan to focus on leadership in strategy execution.

Over the last decade, Narayan has designed, developed and delivered leadership development programmes for individuals, small groups and large groups, in customized and open settings. He has redesigned, repositioned and delivered INSEAD’s flagship senior management programme – The Advanced Management Programme – around the theme of improving leadership judgment.

Today, Narayan spends quite a bit of his time examining how leaders present themselves in their roles. In his view, leaders – and indeed the rest of us – repeat behaviour patterns that were once successful. The ability to unlearn, examine and relearn behaviour frequently arises from mindful attention to the moment. Leaders seeking to improve their effectiveness can do so by practicing attention, which in turn can help them identify areas for improvement in their behaviour.

Prior to joining INSEAD, Narayan worked as a strategy consultant with the Monitor Group, and with his own firm, Clean Slate Consulting. He worked with companies in FMCG, financial services, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, retail and many others. Since joining INSEAD, Narayan has been Associate Dean of Executive Education for Asia, and Dean of Executive Education for all of INSEAD.

close

Henny Sender

Henny Sender

Chief Correspondent, International Finance, Financial Times
Columnist, Nikkei Asian Review

Henny Sender is chief correspondent for international finance at the Financial Times, based in Hong Kong.

Sender was part of a team at the Wall St Journal that won a Loeb award for coverage of the meltdown of Amaranth hedge fund. Her work on the overseas Chinese received a citation from the Overseas Press Club and she was a finalist for the National Magazine Awards. Her book on India was published by Oxford University Press.

Sender holds an MS from the Columbia University School of Journalism and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

close

Ken Koyanagi

Ken Koyanagi

Editor-at-Large, Nikkei Asian Review

Ken has been reporting on business and economy of India and other Asian regions since spring 2015 as an editor-at-large of the Nikkei Asian Review out of Bangkok and then Mumbai, his current base. Prior to the current role, he was the founding Publisher of the Nikkei Asian Review (NAR) since its launch in November 2013.

After joining Nikkei in 1988, Ken as a staff journalist reported in such fields as the Tokyo capital markets, financial sector, TMT (technology, media & telecom) sector. He covered the U.S. technology sector at Nikkei’s Silicon Valley news bureau in Palo Alto, California in 2001-2005.

He studied political science at the Penn State University Graduate School, the French language and the political science at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.

close

Christopher Grimes

Christopher Grimes

Executive Editor, Nikkei Asian Review

Chris Grimes grew up in the small town of Tallapoosa, Georgia, and began his journalism career at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1994. He was hired in 1997 by Dow Jones, where he was a senior reporter covering the technology industry during the dotcom bubble years.

In 2000, Grimes joined The Financial Times, where he wrote about the media industry and post-9/11 New York. As deputy U.S. news editor, he helped steer the FT’s coverage of the financial crisis and the Obama election. He moved to the FT’s London headquarters in 2011, serving as editor of the award-winning Big Read, the paper’s daily piece of in-depth reporting.

Two years after Nikkei's 2015 acquisition of the Financial Times, Grimes moved to Tokyo as a secondee to Nikkei Asian Review. He worked as NAR’s cover story editor before being named the publication's executive editor in April, 2019. He is married and has 13-year-old twins.

close