French Tech Asia Pacific

Rishabh Srivastava is the founder and CEO of Loki.ai - a Singapore based Data Science company. Rishabh describes himself as an independent, sustainable programmer. His work has recently been featured in the Times of India, and his research showing how Indian names may be linked to affluence and success has been widely covered. Right out of college, Rishabh only had 21 cents left in his bank account. After starting a first job as an A.I. engineer, he decided to go the freelance route and soon invested his savings to start Loki.ai, which has been profitable from day one. In this conversation, we talk about what it takes to be an independent A.I. developer, and how Rishabh’s values have been key in shaping the success of his company. We also discuss why companies rely on third parties to help them solve their machine learning / data science problems, why rent-seeking behavior is a bad thing, how to attract A.I. talent - and why everyone should have their own tribe of superheroes!

Jesse Lee is a creative entrepreneur, building his company Waemee (www.waemee.com) from Bangkok, Thailand. Before coming to Asia, Jesse - almost accidentally - became a successful influencer. Today we discuss how in 18 months he went from looking for someone to share his passion with to being almost overwhelmingly successful on a very niche market.

Philippe Beaudoin is co-founder and head of applied research at Element AI, a company founded on the belief that humans and machines can work smarter together and that this synergy can help humans focus on the tasks that they find most meaningful. An essential challenge on that path, says Philippe, is working towards transitive trust in Artificial Intelligence - by helping humans understand how AI systems work and how these systems actually use the data we feed them to make decisions.

Hiring and retaining tech talent is a burning issue for startups and companies all over Southeast Asia. Yassine Belmamoun, Co-Founder and CTO of Manatal, shares his vision on what is broken in the classical HR process. He argues that many companies don’t spend enough time making hiring a great experience for candidates, which he sees as an essential ingredient to hiring and retaining the best tech talent. Yassine also, generously, shares his own experience hiring as a serial entrepreneur and discusses the biggest mistakes he’s made and what he has learned from them. Learn more about Manatal and how they're transforming recruitment in Southeast Asia: https://www.manatal.com/ Check out French Tech Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCorJ8yX8PoAXl7p6RpXRD1Q

Agnès Pannier-Runacher is a French politician and business executive, and the current Secretary of State for Economy and Finance. In our conversation we discuss the economic importance of inclusion and diversity, as well as some of the measures France has taken to promote gender equality in business.

This episode was recorded in front of a live audience at Found8 Singapore. Beyond co-working, Found8's spaces are home to a thriving and collaborative community with instant access to innovation networks. Find out more at https://www.found8.com/

We pick up last week's conversation about attention saturation and ask ourselves: what makes for good content marketing? Recorded on location in Singapore.

The BrownBag Sessions are episodes that aren’t structured interviews, but rather recordings of conversations with daily practitioners in certain areas of expertise. In this series on Marketing and Growth in Asia, Thibault Brière and Nikolaj Groeneweg - both seasoned in the the ways of marketing & growth for startups and large corporations -  discuss the challenges, opportunities and best strategies for marketing in Asia. We’ll discuss market trends, marketing campaigns we that we particularly like or dislike - and share insights from our lives as marketing practitioners.

For this episode we flew to HongKong and sat down with Elvie Lahournère, Director of Digital and Innovation APAC at Natixis Bank. We discuss the many contrasts between Asia and the West when it comes to customer expectations, entrepreneurial mindset and the way startups and big corporations work together.

Sleep might be devalued in the “996” work culture in some parts of Asia (9 am to 9 pm, 6 days a week), but one startup is looking to help people make the most of this important part of human life. Dreem – a successful Paris-based company – has developed a headband that, when combined with the resources of an app, helps people maximize this precious resource. Targeted mainly at people suffering from sleep disorders, like insomnia, it’s found applications in other settings, as well. Raphael Seghier – an old hand in Asia with a decade’s worth of experience the region – is Dreem’s head of business development for APAC. Find out about Dreem’s product and how the company has had to adjust its marketing to the consumer preferences of Asia. More at dreem.com.

Staying up to date on your skillset is critical and can be difficult, and when that skillset is tech - and you plan to use that skillset outside of your home market - it can be even harder. Paris-based global tech bootcamp company Le Wagon looks to fill that educational and training gap for workers. But come prepared to get your "hands dirty", because you won't walk out with just a paper credential. You'll have created a fully coded and functional product at the end.  Listen as French Tech Asia Pacific host Nikolaj Groeneweg talks with Le Wagon's man in Shanghai, Thibault Genaitay, as they discuss the need to keep up on tech and the special tech learning needed for the China market, given its unique ecosystem. Find out more about Le Wagon at www.lewagon.com.

How can we make innovation more open, more diversified and more sustainable? If the best ideas can come from anywhere, how can companies find those ideas, those solutions, if they only have access to a local ecosystem? Agorize, an Open Innovation platform that connects businesses and organizations with innovators from across the world, might be the answer. Mathieu Toulemonde, Agorize Asia CEO, shares what makes their platform so special, tells the story of their fast growth in the ASEAN region and explains how their recent series B will allow to help even more companies to source the best digital solutions from anywhere in the world. Find out more about Agorize on their company website : https://www.agorize.com/en

In his second part of our conversation with Frédéric Nouel, we discuss the evolving attitudes towards entrepreneurship in Japan and the difficulties of starting and growing a company there. Like in many other countries, entrepreneurship in Japan is on the rise. But the push of traditional Japanese society towards stability and corporate careers is still strong and the change is taking time. A lot of time. Because of that, the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Japan still isn’t very easy to navigate, especially for a foreigner. In our conversation, Frédéric shares how he managed to find his way on the Japanese market and brings us valuable insights into the common pitfalls, and how to avoid them, when starting a company there.

This week’s guest is Frédéric Nouel, a long-time game-developer and co-founder of "3rd Kind", a mobile game publishing company based in Tokyo, Japan. Frederic has lived in Japan for almost a decade and shared with us many interesting insights into the Japanese mobile gaming market, as well as on Japanese entrepreneurship. In this first part of our conversation, we take a deep dive into the gaming preferences of Japanese consumers, what it takes to be successful as a game publisher and the importance of content and micro-transactions on the Japanese market.

Soreasmey Ke Bin is the founder and managing partner of Confluences, an incubator in the kingdom of Cambodia as well as the co-president of French Tech Cambodia and the vice president of the French Chamber of Commerce. Who better to tell us about the business opportunities the kingdom has to offer to entrepreneurs? Soreasmey shares his insights into what makes Cambodia special and why the kingdom might be the perfect place for certain startups to get started in the ASEAN region. To learn more, check out: Soreasmey’s incubator “Confluences“ : https://www.confluences.com.kh/The French Chamber of Commerce in Cambodia: https://www.ccifcambodge.org/

Why has Singapore become the business-hub for the ASEAN region - attracting entrepreneurs and investors alike? What makes doing business in Singapore so easy? What are the challenges when expanding from Singapore into neighbouring markets such as Indonesia? We discuss all of these things and more with Adrien Barthel, co-founder of Sleek - a startup that makes it super easy to start and manage a company in Singapore. If you're thinking of setting up a company in Singapore, Sleek is 100 % the best way to do it. Be sure to check out their services here: https://sleek.sg/

Today's guest is Marion Bernardi - Fintech engagement lead at SC Ventures, a Standard Chartered Bank business unit that promotes innovation, invests in disruptive financial technology and explores alternative business models for the financial industry. Marion tells us about the recent launch of the SCVentures Fintech Bridge - a platform that connects and matches partners from the fintech ecosystem to the Bank’s internal community. It’s not always easy for startups and banks to work together and the Fintech Bridge seeks to facilitate and accelerate this process. In our conversation with Marion we explore the differences between Europe and Asia when it comes to the way startups see the financial ecosystem, and we discuss the appetite of Fintech startups to move into the ASEAN market. Learn more about the SCVentures Fintech Bridge here : https://fintechbridge.scventures.io/public/homepage

Yoann Fol and Thibaut Brière are the driving forces behind Singapore's French Tech For Good - a movement that aims to promote the idea that Tech not only can, but should have a positive impact on the world. In this conversation we explore what it means for a tech company to be purpose-driven and whether or not the goal of having a positive impact on the world is compatible with the pursuit of profit and growth. We also discuss Yoann's larger vision for the French Tech For Good movement: to see it become an integral part of the French Tech mission statement, a guiding principle behind which all French startups can rally. Yoann Fol is the founder and CEO of Dathappy, a social enterprise in Singapore that provides high quality consulting to support the data revolution of purpose-driven organizations. Find out more at https://www.dathappy.com/ 

Emmanuel FAUVEL is a serial entrepreneur who has been based in Thailand for almost two decades. In this conversation we explore how the Thai market has changed during that time and what the ecosystem’s current challenges and opportunities are. Emmanuel paints a picture of a Thailand that was perhaps late to the game of tech-entrepreneurship, but that has since managed to play catch-up. Although talent is extremely scarce and access to funding is sometimes elusive if one doesn’t have the right connections, Emmanuel paints an overall picture of a Thailand that is more welcoming to foreign entrepreneurs than one might think - whilst still being affordable and offering an excellent quality of life.

Gilles Langourieux is the CEO and founder of Virtuos - one of the worlds leading game development companies. Virtuos employs over 1,500 staff worldwide and as a part of their global growth, they have recently moved their headquarter from Chine to Singapore - and that’s where we met with Gilles, not long after Virtuous closed a funding round to finance its next phase of growth and international expansion. If you like video games, or movies for that matter, you’ve probably seen some of Virtuos work. They’ve contributed to game titles such as Dark Souls, Farcry and COD: black-ops - but also to movies, such as Rango or Star Wars : The Force Awakens. We talk to Gilles about how he grew his company, which he founded in 2004 in China, we explore the difficulties of being a foreign entrepreneur on the mainland Chinese market and learn how the Chinese market has changed over the last 15 years. Gilles generously taps into his own experience to give advice to us, his fellow entrepreneurs, that are perhaps considering expanding into China and tells about the two major challenges that await there : unprecedented competitive pressure and massive scale.

David Bensadon is the founder and CEO of We Are Caring, Singapore’s smart and ethical agency for hiring foreign domestic workers. Foreign Domestic Workers, or “helpers” as they are often called, are common all across Asia Pacific. A helper is live-in maid, whose duties include cleaning, cooking and childcare. These women often leave their home country, and families, behind because of a lack of other well-paid job opportunities. The total number of domestic workers in Asia is hard to estimate, but informal sources claim that they might account for between 2.5 and 10 percent of total employment in the region. The numbers are overwhelming. China alone is estimated to be the home to 20 million helpers, mostly from the Philippines and Indonesia. When a helper leaves their home-country in search for opportunity, they are bound by rules and regulations, and are obliged to call upon the services of third-party agencies to find a foreign employer. These agencies routinely charge up to 6 months of salary for their services, leaving the helper with little or no money to provide for their families back home. David Bensadon, through his agency We Are Caring, is trying to change all this. The first smart and ethical agency in Singapore, We Are Caring refuses to take any money from helpers. Only three years after its creation, the company has risen to the top 1% of Singaporean maid agencies - all through word-of-mouth and organic growth. Their secret? Listen to our conversation to find out. Learn more about We Are Caring website : https://wearecaring.com/

Nicolas Colin is a thought-provoking voice in the conversation about new institutions in the digital world. He has co-authored several works on technology, including a 2013 Report on Taxation in the Digital Economy, and his articles regularly appear publications such as Foreign Affairs, The Financial Times, and Le Monde. He has recently published his third book, Hedge, on the current shift towards what he calls the Entrepreneurial age, the instability that shift creates and the urgent need to redesign the social safety nets supporting both households and businesses against the risks brought about by the digital age. In our conversation with Nicolas, we explore the main thesis of his book Hedge and its implications for the role of Asia on the world stage. We discuss the role of city-states, such as Singapore, in the new economic paradigm and explore what it will take for a nation to flourish as the entrepreneurial age unfolds. Be sure to get a copy of Nicolas’ latests book Hedge at https://hedgethebook.com/ Learn more about The Family at https://www.thefamily.co/

Cécile Israel is the founder of EasyBachus, a startup based in Shenzhen China, that makes wine easy and fun for everyone. She's also the head of the new French Tech community for the Hongkong-Shenzhen area, as well as president of the "Entrepreneurs Group of South China" with the French Chamber of Commerce. Who better than Cécile to tell us more about the major efforts currently underway to unite the megalopolis formerly known as Pearl River Delta, consisting of 9 cities and 2 special administrative regions in South China - a region that houses no less than 5% of the Chinese population and represents a GDP of 1.4 trillion USD?

Every French person working in tech in Singapore, is already a member of French Tech Singapore - even if they might not yet realize it! Or so says Julien Condamines - ex-Googler, startuper and founder of the Singapore-based innovation boutique “Co-Creation Lab”. We sit down with Julien to talk about the value of community when running a business abroad, the power of the pay-it-forward attitude, and about the opportunities that his involvement in French Tech Singapore have generated for him. But if you’re looking to connect with the the French Tech community in the little red dot, don’t expect to get more out of it than you’re willing to put in, Julien warns. The impact of the network depends entirely on the willingness of its members to provide value to their fellow entrepreneurs. The best way to get involved is to not to passively reach out, but to actively participate - to create value, in whatever way you can. Find out more about French Tech Singapore at : https://frenchtech.sg/ Learn more about the Co-Creation Lab at : https://cocreationlab.co/

In this episode we quickly introduce ourselves and the French Tech Asia Pacific podcast. Whether you're looking to get to know the French entrepreneurs that are making an impact here in the APAC region, or want to learn more about the influencers, investors and policy-makers that shape Asia Pacific's startup ecosystem - this is the show for you! We would love to hear from you, so reach out by sending us an email at hello@frenchtechpodcast.com