featured participants

Min-Liang Tan is the co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Razer Inc (HKEX Stock Code: 1337). He is also Chairman and CEO of THX Ltd. 

His leadership has resulted in the growth of Razer from a two-man startup to a multinational market leader that was honored on Fortune Magazine’s “Unicorn List” in 2015 (private companies valued at US$1 billion or more). Razer went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2017.  

Tan was named one of "The 25 Most Creative People in Tech" by Business Insider in 2015. Juniper Research distinguished him as a “Top 10 Most Influential Leaders in Tech” while Tech in Asia has ranked him No. 1 of the 30 top Southeast Asia tech founders. In 2016, he was named one of the “Straits Times Asians of the Year”. 

Tan graduated from the National University of Singapore Law School.

YEECHOO gives customers the chance to wear their dream designer dress with the swipe of a finger - but for a fraction of the cost. With more than 30,000 subscribed members, the Hong Kong-based online designer rental service offers hundreds of options from labels including Victoria Beckham, Badgley Mischka and Oscar de la Renta. YEECHOO also offers accessories and styling tips to complete the look. Zhang raised financing from Alibaba Entrepreneurship Fund in May 2016 and plans to expand Yeecho to Macau, China and Southeast Asia later this year.

Zeman is a serial entrepreneur and the chairman and 'father' of Lan Kwai Fong Group, a major property owner and developer of one of the most popular entertainment and nightlife districts in Hong Kong. Besides being the Chairman of Hong Kong Ocean Park for over a decade, he is now the Honorary Advisor to the Park and serves as a member of the Board of West Kowloon Cultural District Authority, and is the Chairman of its Performing Arts Committee. He was awarded the Grand Bauhinia Medal in 2011 and the Businessman of the Year at the Hong Kong Business Award in 2008. In 2001, Dr. Zeman was appointed a Justice of the Peace in Hong Kong.

Sally & Malcolm Begbie have served developing nations since 1979.

Initially, Sally worked with NGOs providing communications/PR services pro bono. Malcolm, her husband, a Chartered Accountant, provided financial services. 

In 1995, the couple birthed the Crossroads Foundation and remain as Executive Directors. Crossroads brings people together to combat world need in four ways: 

• Global Distribution: The Hong Kong community generously donates excellent quality goods. These are distributed to people in need, in Hong Kong and around the world. 
• Global Handicrafts sells goods from people in need within Hong Kong, and around the world, on a fair trade basis. Aid helps people today. An income helps them tomorrow.
• Global Hand is a match-making service which links for-profit and non-profit organisations who want to partner to help meet global need. 
• Global X-perience offers simulation x-periences in which participants step, briefly, ‘into the shoes’ of people facing global challenges: war, poverty, HIV vulnerability, blindness, environmental challenges, hunger, etc.

Crossroads’ is headquartered in Hong Kong on 9 acres provided by the government, with additional bases in UK/Europe, USA & Australia. Its international team, all of whom are volunteers, numbers 100.

In 2012, Sally and Malcolm both received the Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) award by the Australian Government for their “distinguished service to the international community in the provision of humanitarian relief, particularly through the Crossroads Foundation, and as a significant contributor to United Nations efforts to connect business organisations with those in need.”

A travel enthusiast, Gnock Fah started Klook in 2014 as a web and mobile platform to book attractions, tours, activities and other travel services at exclusive rates. Ramping up quickly, Klook has expanded to over 80 destinations in Asia and grown its team to 200 across eight locations, with over 5 million trips booked in 2016. Klook recently closed $30 million Series B funding from Sequoia Capital, Matrix Partners. A Mauritius native, Gnock Fah grew up speaking seven languages, was educated in the U.S. on a full scholarship, and started his career with Morgan Stanley Investment Banking in Hong Kong.

Founded in 2016, VeeR VR is a China-based platform for virtual reality content. Less than a year since its launch, it has attracted content creators from 180 countries, who can upload their VR clips to the website and work with the company to integrate them with different hardware. VeeR VR also developed an editing tool for 360-degree video called VeeR Editor. So far, it has raised $17.5 million in funding from investors including DCM, Bertelsmann Asia Investment and Hony Capital.

In 2015, Shi Xiaogang founded augmented reality (AR) startup Xloong in Beijing. The company utilizes this frontier technology -- which superimposes virtual information on the real-world view -- to make consumer and enterprise gears for various uses. While their sports goggles can assist cyclists with AR-based digital maps, Xloong’s “Techlens T2” glasses enable remote equipment maintenance by scanning machines and sharing real-time video feeds with engineers. They can then examine the feeds and input their feedback, in the form of AR-based marks and drawings to show malfunctions more clearly, and allow for remote assistance. “I believe AR will replace PCs and smartphones to become the next computing platform,” says Shi. “The technology has huge potential and many applications, which is why I chose to start a related business.” Aided by government grants, Xloong is now making AR glasses for Chinese police, which are expected to ship later this year. The connected gear, which look similar to ordinary spectacles, can recognize faces and cross reference them with profiles on China’s national ID databases to identify potential suspects. If there’s a match, a red alert combined with the person’s name and ID number is projected onto an officer’s real world view, helping to make a catch.
 

Waldo is cofounder & CEO of Mantra, China’s first social impact-focused fashion brand. In 2016, Mantra’s first product line sold out within 72 hours, following Waldo and Mantra’s story going viral and reaching 300 million views on Weibo and WeChat. Along with non-profit sister organization Education in Sight, which Waldo cofounded with Andrew Shirman in 2012, the team has applied a buy-one-give-one model to give over 23,000 free eyeglasses and 170,000 free eye exams to children in need in rural China.

Sang Hun Oh and Seung Bae Son cofounded robotics startup LUXROBO, which built MODI, a module system for DIY IoT and robotic creations. MODI makes it easy to create robots, like playing with Lego blocks, to make robotics technology more accessible. LUXROBO works with schools and education institutions to deploy MODI for robotics education. CEO Oh has won around 170 awards at robotics competitions and served as a coach for South Korea’s national robot team for five years. CTO Son is an electric engineer who has worked on hardware from electro-optical infrared for helicopters to underwater drone control display units.

Stanislava Pinchuk (Miso) is an artist that maps areas of conflict around the world, data mapping how landscape is changed by political events with tiny dots. Her practice examines the ways in which ground retains memory of violence. Crossing disciplines between science & art, her gallery work has put forward a new research question within topographic & political spheres. She’s mapped nuclear zones and topographies of changing borders in war, such as Chernobyl and Fukushima. Miso has worked with international clients such as Chanel, Tiffany & Co., and Nike -- for whom she is currently fronting a global campaign and has tattooed her drawings on singers Florence Welch and Sam Smith.

Vinesh Sinha is the founder and Managing Director of Fathopes Energy, which he set up in 2010 with a refund from London’s School of Commerce after he dropped out. The company turns waste oils from the food industry in Malaysia into biofuels that he sells to companies globally. Consequently, FatHopes takes waste oils out of the food chain and reduces carbon emissions. FatHopes had sales of $147.6 million last year and are looking for other growth opportunities. Sinha was nominated for the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award 2017.

At the age of 24, Parsons' graduate Aakriti Kumar returned to India to set up Differniture – a sustainable, design-based furniture atelier and design-house. The award-winning designer follows a cradle-to-cradle ethos, which means her manufacturing processes are non-toxic, zero-waste, and utilizes responsibly purchased reclaimed wood. Kumar’s next project includes working on an eco-conscious cabin community in the Himalayas.

Lim Yuet Kim, Lee Swee Lin and Ling Shook Shian are the cofounders of the Picha Project. Named after a young refugee boy, their social enterprise empowers refugee families in Malaysia by connecting those who have cooking skills with companies, organizations and individuals needing catering. Home-cooked traditional food is first prepared by refugees, before it is packaged and delivered by the Picha Project to the end consumer. Around 50% of all revenue goes to the refugee family who did the cooking. The three entrepreneurs won the Edge Inspiring Young Leader's Award in 2017.

Togo Ogi cofounded the company – which has raised nearly $1 million – with Waseda University classmate Ryushi Shiohama to train people for sports like weightlifting without a real instructor. With its augmented reality system called ARC Mirror, the trainer’s image is projected onto a full-size mirror to show form. Meanwhile, people practicing can see their reflection and try to follow the coach’s model; Its 3D scanning checks the form and gives advice.

Julius Tan is the founder of Electrify, an energy retail marketplace based in Singapore. As the country liberalizes its electricity market, the company allows consumers to compare electricity prices from multiple retailers and purchase directly from them. According to its website, Electrify has facilitated $3.8 million worth of transactions since March 2017, with commercial and industrial customers buying 30Gwh of electricity through the platform. Its next move is a new energy marketplace based on blockchain, which enables peer-to-peer trading from small-scale producers such as residential rooftop solar and wind turbines. The company recently raised $30 million in less than ten days through the sale of electronic currency tokens.

Hu's dream since junior high school was to launch a rocket. In May 2011, he led an amateur team of college students in Guangzhou, China, to study rockets, and two years later, his dream came true, launching a space-exploring rocket he made in Inner Mongolia. In 2014, Hu set up China's first non-state space rocket firm, Linkspace, where he serves as its CEO, and is planning his first commercial launch in 2017.

Tekriwal founded JetSetGo, an India-based private jet concierge service that links passengers to planes through an online marketplace. She defied the odds first by breaking into a male-dominated profession as a woman and again by starting the company in 2013 after a bout with cancer. She went into aviation because of a passion for the profession since age 16. The MBA graduate's firm now has contracts in excess of $6 million and manages assets worth $70 million.

Miles Wen received his Bachelor degree in Computer Engineering with First Class Honors and minor in Finance from HKU in 2011. He then obtained his PhD degree in Electrical & Electronic Engineering under Prof. Victor Li from HKU in 2015.

Dr. Wen is an alumni of Lee Hysan Hall, former resident tutor at New College, former Founding Vice-President of Eta Kappa Nu (Lambda Iota Chapter) at HKU, and former Fulbright scholar at Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, UC Berkeley. He is an expert in power system, information and communication technologies, optimization algorithms, big data, and machine learning. He is the author of over 10 academic papers and the inventor of one patent. In 2015, he co-founded Fano Labs Limited, a high-tech startup backed by HKU, Hong Kong Science & Technology Park, angel investors, and venture capitalists. He is currently the CEO of Fano Labs. Since early 2016, he has been appointed as an Honorary Assistant Professor (Electrical and Electronic Engineering) at HKU.

Ah Moon Marip (known as Ah Moon) is a singer and songwriter from the Kachin State of Myanmar. A former member of Me N Ma Girls, Myanmar's first all-girl pop band, Ah Moon released her first solo album, Min Pay Tae A Chit, in 2014. It sold out in the country within weeks. She's since released another album, Automatic, with plans for another in 2018. She's one of Myanmar's most recognized performers, with over 2.5 million Facebook fans.

After studying in Paris, pastry chef Talita Setyadi returned to Indonesia in 2013 to open her first bakery, BEAU. Among the classic French favorites, Setyadi offers twists in her entremets, or multi-layered mousse-based cakes (raspberry, yogurt and pistachio is a signature combo). The bakery provides goods -- all made with natural, local ingredients -- to about 100 cafes, restaurants and hotels in Jakarta, and took in close to $1 million in revenue in 2017. Setyadi has also made education a pillar of BEAU; nearly all its bakers are trained from scratch, starting as cleaners or stewards at the company. The 29-year-old served as the youngest and only female judge in The World Pastry Cup in 2017.