Emerging Markets Growth Leaders

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 below the episode summary:

01:23 - welcome & backstory

07:23 - How Ula Started

10.18 - Learnings from Amazon - Customer Centricity & engaging around a mission

14:08 - Solving customer challenges

16:33 - Ula.app - Problem Statement

23.09 - On raising Series A

26.29 - On rapid scaling

31.38 - What’s next for Ula

36.13 - Challenges of growing a tech team in Asia

41.30 - On managing distributed teams and opinions on the future of workspaces

50.27 - Alan’s top tips on growing a business & closing thoughts

55.28 - Quickfire question round

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

11:45 - What is Product Management

18:05 - What are the key skills needed in Product Management

23:09 - How to get into Product Management

27:53 - Considerations on Hiring a Product Management Leader

40:28 - How PMs can gain buy in & build trust

42:24 - Yi Wei’s key considerations, advice & predictions

49:00 - What needs to change in Product Management

50:45 - The future of Product Management

52:16 - Overview of the state of eCommerce in MENA

57:29 - Quickfire question round with both Yi Wei & Nathalie

Reading List - Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love | Marty Cagan

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 finishing with the quick fire question round.

Please find below the episode summary:

1:24 - Welcome

3:12 - Debbies first trip to SE Asia

6:29 - Setting up social enterprises in Cambodia

13:59 - The evolution of microfinance in SE Asia

16:41 - The dark side of microfinance & digital loan sharks

22:00 - The role of responsible businesses

23:32 - About the creation of Lucy

29:10 - Research into female owned businesses & access to finance

31:28 - What will Lucy do and how can it help?

50:15 - Quickfire Questions

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 - Design thinking principles & innovation labs
• 13:30 - Initial Impressions of the Middle East
• 17:33 - Exciting advances in the Middle East
• 22:56 - Russia, Central Europe & Africa - leaders in innovation
• 21:43 - Visa Innovation Department
• 32:28 - Fintech in the Middle East
• 36:03 - What we can look forward to?
• 40.48 - Quickfire question round

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 how they solved market first scale problems whilst growing one of Asia’s most successful technology companies. He also gives his views on the exciting future that technology will help bring about during a fun and very informative quick fire question round.

Please find below the episode summary:

01:41 - Welcome - year in review & coping with COVID

09:51 - The early days & getting into computer science

11.16 - Applying data management principles to organisation management

19:21 - AirAsia

25:07 - Ditesh’s journey with Grab

31.56 - Grabs amazing growth

38:17 - How to maintain the vision & mission through growth

44:20 - Advice on growing and scaling a large organisation

48:51 - Building a great team and hiring team players

53:57 - Technical challenges of growth at Grab

1.04:52 - Best Practice vs Best Fit - Opinion vs Data

1.11:16 - Future of Grab & the Digibank

1.17:06 - Quick Fire Question Round

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 to light new understanding of mental health. We also discuss the incredibly exciting future of healthcare and how the use of technologies such as NLP and Computer vision will revolutionise the industry.

In this special edition I am equally delighted to welcome True Partner and Co-lead of the global healthcare practice Jacob Sack who joins the show as a Co Host.

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 attainment of the forbes award and the exciting market that is her home country of Vietnam.

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 disrupting the startup world.

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 of 2020, welcomed Ant Financial into its shareholding in a deal worth 73.5m USD.

A Canadian national, with a decade across various organisations within the World bank, Hal joins me for a fascinating deep dive into the financial services ecosystem of Myanmar and the role that cars full of cash play in the Myanmar domestic remittance business. He also shares his insights on the importance of culturally sensitivity, listening and the key attributes required to be successful moving into a new market.

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 Investree have had on the Indonesian market. We continue to explore SE Asia regional fintech story, the role of the regulators and the future of the region. We discuss the similarities between launching a business and running a marathon, and finish with the now world famous Quickfire question round.