Retail Asia Summit 2022

Willy Chang is an associate partner based in Bain & Company’s Singapore office. He focuses on Bain’s Private Equity and Digital practices.

His expertise spans a range of internet economy sectors in Southeast Asia, including e-Commerce, on-demand platforms, FinTech, amongst others.

Prior to joining Bain in 2014, Willy spent 7 years as a researcher in Quantum Computing.

He holds an PhD in Physics from Harvard University and a BA from Columbia University

Mr. Rajesh Kumar is the CEO Overseas at Ferns N Petals and is based out of UAE. Joined in the year 2012, he heads business in UAE as well as helps the company in the expanding the operations to other countries. An MBA graduate in Marketing & Finance, he comes with a deeper understanding of core values of Ferns & Petals and brings a 360-degree view of the e-commerce business for setting up the UAE business in the early 2015. 

During his tenure of 3 years in India, he contributed to multiple functional areas of Marketplace business, affiliate marketing, alliances, digital marketing, category management and international operations.  

His mantra for life is to “Everything is learnable”. Learning is the key to live life to the fullest. 

Natee Srirussamee
SVP – Digital Retail 
The Mall Group Co., Ltd.

• Digital Marketing & eCommerce
• Strategic Alliances & New Digital Business Development
• Digital Transformation
• Data & Digital Assets Monetization

Prior Experience

UOB (Thai) – Executive Director (2 years) 

Citi Thailand – Director (15.5 years)

• Digital Sales & Marketing
• Partnership and Business Transformation
• Data Analytics and Segmentation
• Client Experience Management
• Credit Card & Lending Product

Education

• Georgetown University – MBA
• Chulalongkorn University – BBA

As founder & Executive Chairman of Senheng Holdings, KH Lim is the driving force of the business - establishing the business in 1989 and built it into one of the country’s most consequential consumer electronic brand, transforming how Malaysian shop seamlessly in a new retail phenomena, that fuelled the business to more than RM1.4billion in revenue, making Senheng the largest consumer electronic chain store in Malaysia

Awarded as Male Entrepreneur Of The Year, outstanding achievement with The Star Outstanding Business Awards (SOBA); and EY Entrepreneur Of The Year, Lim reliance on scientific methods and hunger for knowledge has inspired him to keep up with the new retail trends that are heavily derived from innovative technology.

No matter how the business world changes, the essence or core of the business remained unchanged “Happy customer with peace of mind” Lim’s famous quote, putting customer at the heart of the business.

Zara Lightowler is an Associate Partner in Bain & Company’s Consumer products and Retail practices, based in Kuala Lumpur.

She has more than 10 years consulting experience at Bain. Her client portfolio spans Southeast Asia — especially Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand— in addition to Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom and Western Europe.

Zara's work centers on strategy and new business building, brand acceleration (including through ecommerce channels), commercial and operational excellence, operating model as well as M&A strategy and post-merger integration. She advises clients across a range of industries, with a focus on consumer products (food, beverage, personal care) and retail.

She previously worked in strategy at Diageo and held a number of positions at Mars Wrigley across supply chain, marketing, sales and category strategy.

Zara holds a B.A. from The University of Oxford.

Andy Parker is a Partner at Innosight, where he leads the Asia-Pacific practice. Andy has advised senior leaders at companies such as McDonald’s, CJ Cheiljedang, Coca-Cola Amatil, Bose and Ford. Andy has over fifteen years of strategy consulting experience working, and being based for significant periods of time, in both developed and emerging markets across six continents.

At Innosight Andy’s work focuses on helping clients develop long-term growth strategies, manage transformation, design new disruptive growth businesses and build enduring innovation capabilities and culture. Andy has led numerous projects for multinational and regional companies across several Asian markets.     

Andy is a speaker and author on topics of innovation, disruption and long-term growth. He is a co-author of the 2020 Harvard Business Publishing book, Eat, Sleep, Innovate: How to Make Creativity an Everyday Habit Inside Your Organization.  

Prior to joining Innosight, Andy was a member Accenture's Global Strategy Group in London and Singapore where he worked on numerous transformational and strategic projects for consumer goods and services clients.

Andy received a BSc. Honors degree in Business Administration from the School of Management at The University of Bath, in the United Kingdom. He lives in Singapore with his wife and three children.  

At Euromonitor International, Hianyang is responsible for the research output and client support for the services and payment cluster across the Australasia region, including retailing, consumer finance, digital consumer and foodservice. During the course of research, he engages with local and international clients involving market assessment and sizing, competitive landscape assessment, SWOT analysis, market entry strategy and IPO market research. As a Senior Consultant, he also helps to mentor analysts, collaborate with various research teams globally to ensure knowledge sharing and cross-border data standardisation. Further to that, Hianyang continues to write and present on the industries he covers in various publications, Passport and the blog.

Hianyang is fluent in English and Mandarin and has a Bachelor of Commerce, majoring in Accounting and Finance from the Australian National University

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hianyangchan/

Frederic Tardy brings significant experience in consumer lending, digital transformation, marketing, and branding; he has a long and successful track record in marketing, e-commerce, partnership and digital transformation across many geographies and leading financial institutions. He started his career in BNP Paribas/Cetelem, where he held multiple roles. As the Global Head of E-Business, he set up the e-commerce platform of Cetelem, and also served as the CEO of the company's Innovation Lab in San Francisco.

From BNP Paribas, Frederic moved on to AXA as Group Chief Marketing and Distribution Officer and later as Member of the Asia Executive Committee where he spearheaded the digital transformation of AXA, focusing on digital sales, developing partnerships and repositioning the AXA brand. Frederic has received global recognition for his marketing activities and was awarded Chief Digital Officer of the Year in France twice, in 2015 and 2016.

In his role in Home Credit, his portfolio includes country strategy, marketing, product, sales, branding, and digitisation.

Leonard is the practice lead for Google Cloud’s Smart Analytics solutions with Deloitte Consulting Southeast Asia’s Artificial Intelligence & Data offering. He has implemented Google Cloud for clients to build the single source of truth for all data. Having been in the industry for more than 30 years, and more specifically with Big Data and Cloud in the last 8 years, Leonard brings with him implementation experiences across Retail, Conglomerates and Consumer businesses. Some of the challenges Leonard has helped his clients solve include finding the single source of truth for Customer data.

David is a digital expert with more than 25 years of experience in technology, of which last 15 years working at executive level, holding c-level positions leading ecommerce, digital transformation, technology and innovation for large retail and online organizations.

Delivering large and innovative digital transformation programs in department stores like Harrods, multi-category, multi-format retail groups like Alshaya and private equity. Before joining Central, David led ecommerce and omnichannel at Alshaya group in the Middle East.

Adele Leong is a seasoned luxury retail veteran whose adept leadership and clarity of vision have helped propel brands forward and drive a renewed focus on strategic retail value creation for continued business growth and success in the global market. At OnTheList, she leads the development and execution of key initiatives to support the company’s growth in Singapore and expansion into Southeast Asia.

Adele has more than 20 years of experience in luxury retail, with a proven track record of managing some of the world’s most renowned brands across the Fragrance and Cosmetics, Fashion and Accessories, and Fine Jewellery and Watches divisions. Prior to OnTheList, she was the Head of Retail at Dolce & Gabbana and Valentino for Southeast Asia, and the General Manager (South-east Asia) at Fendi, part of the LVMH Group based in Singapore. Adele also has over a decade of general management experience with CHANEL Singapore, where she led the Fragrance and Beauty division before moving to the luxury brand’s Fine Jewellery and Watches arm and played an instrumental role in the set-up of the business unit in Singapore in 2008. 

Adele graduated from the National University of Singapore with a Bachelor of Business Administration, majoring in Marketing.

During her free time, she enjoys baking and cooking, and indulges her culinary passion with the Peranakan cuisine which allows her to stay connected to her heritage and roots. She also enjoys spending time with her 16-year-old son and daughters aged 14 and 10, together with her husband and their 2.5 years old golden retriever.    

Vili Poulain

Regional Vice President of Strategic Partnerships
ATOME

Vili is the Regional Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at Atome, overseeing the business development for retail and the coordination across countries.

She has over a decade of experience within the F&B, Beauty, and Retail Industries in Asia and growing partnerships within these industries.

Previously Senior Vice President for Regional Supermarket, and Vice President of Commercial & Marketing at Redmart, Penny brings over 12 years of expertise in customer proposition and growth strategy. Penny initially branched into strategy before finding her niche with e-commerce—delivering growth at Ocado, United Kingdom’s largest online grocer, and subsequently, at Redmart. By maintaining a customer-focused approach and deep-diving into the heartland Singaporean customer segment, Penny led Redmart’s growth from a specialised expat service into a household brand.

In Carousell, Penny is the business leader of Recommerce and is responsible for driving the next phase of classifieds. Recommerce is an extension of the company’s overall vision of making secondhand the first choice and its focus is rolling out innovative products and solutions for users’ barriers to secondhand, such as trust and convenience. Penny will be responsible for Recommerce business strategy, scaling growth opportunities regionally and validating product-market fit. She will be overseeing all function leads that are dedicated to Recommerce in Carousell regionally, from Marketing to Data and Engineering, and reports to Co-founder and CEO, Siu Rui Quek.

Carousell is the leading classifieds group in Greater Southeast Asia on a mission to inspire the world to start selling, and to make secondhand the first choice. Founded in August 2012 in Singapore, the group has a leading presence in eight markets under the brands Carousell, Mudah.my, Cho Tot and OneKyat, serving tens of millions of monthly active users. Carousell is backed by leading investors including Telenor Group, Rakuten Ventures, Naver, STIC Investments and Sequoia Capital India.

Having studied Chinese language, society and history at the University of Leeds, Matthew Crabbe has since turned an academic interest in China into a career. As co-founder of research company Access Asia, Matthew has worked exhaustively on trying to make sense of the myriad contradictions in China's economics and statistics on the consumer markets there. He now leads the development of Mintel's Trends content in Asia-Pacific, with specific interest in future prediction.

Jan has a 15 career in the technology sector across strategy, business development, and marketing. He is the co-founded and CEO of Fairmart, a company that drives sales for physical retailers by showing shoppers what products they have in stock. The company is headquartered in Singapore