Deep Tech innovations can play a critical role in addressing global developmental challenges. Priority sectors such as healthcare, mobility, agriculture, urban solutions are seeing strong startup and innovation activities to deliver impact and achieve sustainable development, particularly in Asia, home to about 60% of the world’s population.

Asia is building a vibrant Deep Tech sector, with corporates, startups, investors and research institutions increasingly exploring collaboration opportunities. Among the world’s top 3 nations in its startup capabilities, India is harnessing tech innovation to meet the needs of its growing population, especially on how AI can help address problems at the base of the pyramid (BoP). The same sentiment is echoed in Singapore, where its pioneering Deep Tech capabilities to manage the Covid-19 pandemic have been in the global spotlight.

Join us in this webinar where we bring together experts from Asia to discuss how Deep Tech impacts social innovation and how the investment landscape will evolve in the region.

Date: 15 September 2020

Time: 11:30am – 12:30pm (Singapore time/ UTC+8)

Programme:

11:30am – 11:45am: Opening Remarks by SGInnovate and the FICCI

11:45am – 12:30pm: Panel Discussion and Q&A

• Ms. Padmaja Ruparel, President, Indian Angel Network
• Phi Van Nguyen, Chairwoman, Vietnam Angel Network and Open Innovation Vietnam
• Bidyut Dumra, Executive Director - Head of Innovation, DBS
• Dr Aloknath De, Corporate Vice President and CTO, Samsung
• Moderator: Mr. Avnish Sabharwal, Managing Director - Open Innovation & Deal Origination Lead, Accenture India 

Speakers’ Profiles:

Padmaja Ruparel, President, Indian Angel Network

Padmaja is nationally recognised as a key figure in the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem and has helped co-found many of the relevant institutions, besides being an active Angel investor herself. Her operating experience spans large corporates and startups/early-stage companies. She has been awarded as one of the ‘Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Business’ by Fortune India, listed in Forbes India’s W- Power Trailblazers and “30 Most Powerful Women in India” by Business Today.

Padmaja is also the Co-Founder & President of Indian Angel Network (IAN), India’s first & now possibly one of the world’s largest group of business angels, comprising the who’s who of successful entrepreneurs and dynamic CEOs from India and overseas. She built IAN from inception, making it within a decade, a unique institution globally, with close to 500 investors from 12 countries and a portfolio of 135+ companies in 7 countries, spanning 17 sectors, with operations across six cities & London. IAN model is a full-service model for investors - from a pipeline of investment opportunities to divestment. She is the Founding Partner of the IAN Fund, a uniquely differentiated Rs. 450 crores (~$70mn) Fund which, along with IAN, is set to create the largest horizontal platform in India for investing in seed and early-stage ventures.

Phi Van Nguyen, Chairwoman, Vietnam Angel Network and Open Innovation Vietnam

Nguyen Phi Van holds an MBA from Australia majoring in marketing communication. Her experience spans over 20 years as a senior executive in brand, retail, and franchise development across global emerging markets in Asia, The Middle East, Africa, and Eastern Europe. Besides running her venture builder, Phi Van is currently an advisor to Project 844 under the Ministry of Science and Technology of Vietnam on startup & innovation, chairwoman of Vietnam Business Angel Network, and Open Innovation Vietnam. Phi Van is 2015 award winner of Retail Leadership presented by Asia Retail Congress, 2017 & 2018 award winner of 100 Top Great Retail Minds presented by World Retail Congress, 2019 award winner of ASEAN Outstanding Business Award, and presented in 2019 and 2020 Global Female Franchising Power List. Phi Van is the author of six books, "Franchising – The Short Route to Global Markets", "Cross The Rice Field, Reach The World", "Go Global: An MSME's guide to global franchising", "I, The Future and The World", "In Search of Myself", and the first-ever human-AI collaborated book in Vietnam "Nym - My Future Self".

Bidyut Dumra, Executive Director - Head of Innovation, DBS

With over 15 years of professional experience in multi-national organisations, Bidyut has taken on senior-management positions in media, entertainment, telecommunications, automotive, utility and aviation across markets such as Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Taiwan, India, Thailand and Vietnam.

His current role focuses on building and delivering ecosystems, partnerships, digital strategy and innovation. These involve setting principles and standards, identifying opportunities, training and applying design thinking and agile, rapid prototyping, structuring and financing products, implementing and operationalising systems, managing change and running programmes to invoke a culture of creativity and innovation across the bank.

Parallel to his corporate career, he has exercised his entrepreneurship by co-founding and partnering diverse ventures including a film distribution and production company, an international film festival, a boutique technology consultancy, an arts programme, retail lifestyle products and baby clothes. It was this diversity in experience, entrepreneurial instinct and evangelistic passion for agility and design that led him to take on an innovation-driven role at DBS Bank.

Dr Aloknath De, Corporate Vice President and CTO, Samsung

Dr Aloknath De is Corporate Vice President of Samsung Electronics, S.Korea and Chief Technology Officer of Samsung R&D Institute India (SRI-B). Dr De has over thirty years of industrial and research experiences including BEL, Nortel (Montreal), Hughes and with ST-Ericsson where he was R&D Director and Country Manager. During 2005-11, he has served as Visiting/Adjunct Professorship with IIT-Roorkee and IIT-Delhi. He holds B.Tech. from IIT, Kharagpur; M.E. from IISc, Bangalore; and PhD from McGill University, Montreal.

He is a recipient of ‘Alexander Graham Bell Prize’ in Canada. He has received ‘IETE Memorial Awards’ for distinguished contributions in Electronics and Communications. He also received IDC Insights Award for Innovation in Telecom (2015), Zinnov ‘Intrapreneurship of the Year’ award (2016) and has been considered as one of ‘Most Influential CIO/CTOs of India’. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and a Fellow of IE, IETE and Indian National Academy of Engg (INAE). He is also cited in Marquis’ Who’s Who in the World (2016). He promotes science and technology linkage and is actively involved in building innovative products.

Moderator’s Profile:

Avnish Sabharwal, Managing Director - Open Innovation & Deal Origination Lead, Accenture India

Avnish has been a strategist and a technology evangelist with extensive experience of 25 years and a track record around market making, growth hacking, corporate innovation, digital transformation and leadership development for Top 500 Fortune clients in both mature and emerging markets. He has had a successful track record of building new practices and service-based organisations from inception and making them sustainable and high performing businesses by implementing strong management and leadership best practices backed with world-class systems, processes and controls.

In his current role at Accenture in India he is responsible for, innovation: designing and leading the Open Innovation programme for India including collaborating with startups, VCs, PEs, Accelerators, Incubators, Industry bodies as well as academia. Mr Sabharwal looks into establishing a pipeline for making strategic minority investments as well as identifying and selecting potential acquisition targets. He is also responsible for building growth and profitability road-map with focus on corporate strategy, digital strategy, portfolio optimisation and competitive positioning, mergers and acquisitions and strategy execution.

Before Accenture, he has worked with IBM's Global Business Services in India and the United Kingdom for almost a decade in various leadership roles.