Emerging Markets Growth Leaders Sam Randall
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- Business
Welcome to the Emerging Markets Growth Leaders podcast with True. On this show we speak with founders, investors and industry leaders from exciting businesses across Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa. We ask them to share their fascinating stories and invaluable market insights and experiences across eCommerce, Fintech and other Growth industries in some of the most fascinating locations in the world.
Hosted by Sam Randall, Partner at True Search.
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S0204 - Customer Obsession, Covid and Contemporising Warungs - Alan Wong, CTO - Ula.app
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 -
S02E03 - The What, Why and How of Product Management with Yi Wei Ang, CPO @ Talabat
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 -
S2E02 - Debbie Watkins, CEO & Cofounder of Lucy - Female Focus Fintech
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 -
S2E01 - Akshay Chopra, Head of Innovation & Product Design @ Visa CEMEA
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 -
Ep12. Ditesh Gathani - Head of Engineering, Grab
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 -
Ep11. Joydeep Sarkar Chief Analytics Officer @ Holmusk - cohosted by True Partner Jacob Sack
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.