NUS Industry Roundtable Series

NUS Industry Roundtable Series - Food For Thought: The Impact of Agrifood in Southeast Asia

Event Details

Description

From farm to fork, how has the agrifood industry been contributing to the various Southeast Asian economies? How has the different stakeholders been navigating within the industry to bring about greater impact in this sector?

Hear from a specially curated line-up of industry experts to learn more about the agrifood industry, as well as the underlying opportunities, challenges and its importance to the Southeast Asian economies.

Speakers

Moderator: Brian Koh, Director, NUS Enterprise

Brian is a Director with NUS Enterprise, and oversees Ecosystem Development, Digital & Data Infrastructure, and Corporate Partnerships & Program. He has been involved in building up the eco‐system supporting the startups and entrepreneurs both on and off‐campus & regionally, establishing the infrastructure, programs and networks for the eco‐system. This includes building up BLOCK71, which has now become part of the JTC Launchpad area; an iconic entrepreneurial space in Singapore. He has been actively involved in building up “deep‐tech” startups and of late having a keen interest in Foodtech, Agritech and Aquatech. Brian also oversees the Innovation for Societal Impact team with a purpose to see Innovation and Entrepreneurship enterprises with a heart. Prior to NUS, Brian together with some friends were involved in pioneering Adroit Innovations from a start‐up company to be a publicly listed company on the main board of the Singapore Stock Exchange in 2000. In his last position in Adroit, Brian headed and led the Malaysia operations, sales & marketing, and general management activities. Built a profitable market presence for this regional subsidiary.

Panelist: Angela Tay, Investor, Agfunder

Angela is part of the AgFunder Investment team and is based in Singapore. She has extensive experience in investment management, including previous roles as an Investment Analyst with The State of Victoria, Australia and Equity Research Analyst with HSBC Global Research. She is skilled at conducting financial analysis and due diligence and making investment recommendations. With her extensive background in some of the largest listed companies in Singapore, she is also skilled at implementing robust investor relations strategies. She holds a Bachelor of Communications from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and a postgrad in applied finance from Macquarie University, Australia.

Panelist: Aryo Wiryawan, CEO, Indmira, and Chairman & Founder, Jala

Aryo is a serial entrepreneur who start various ventures, including a restaurant, a photography business and a land rehabilitation firm PT. Indmira. Aryo had also acquired some shrimp farming experience since 2001 and started using Indmira as a vehicle to collaborate with Atnic to develop IoT sensors for shrimp farms. Indmira and Atnic eventually founded Jala in late 2015.

Panelist: Kit Yong, Founder, REAPED

Kit is the founder of Forte Biotech, a NUS GRIP spin-off startup. Coming from a small family business background, he had seen members of his extended family and other prawn farmers suffer from huge losses that were associated with prawn disease. As such, Forte Biotech was conceptualised to bring lab-grade diagnostics to the farm. RAPID provides farmers with a solution to identify diseases early in order to take action to save their crop. Forte Biotech is currently being incubated at the NUS Agritech Center, alongside their sister company, REAPED Farming, which focuses on urban aquaculture solutions. “

Panelist: Tan Siow Ying, R&D Senior Principal Tech Scout, PepsiCo

Siow Ying is the PepsiCo R&D External Innovation WHM Lead based in Singapore. In this role, she is focused on building connectivity within the External Innovation network and supporting the PepsiCo Innovation teams. She is responsible for carrying out global open innovation activities and future strategy, and enabling R&D partnerships. Prior to this role, Siow Ying was part of the PepsiCo R&D Beverage Applications in New York.