Retail Asia Summit 2023

Christian is a Singapore-based senior marketer and business leader with more than 20 years of experience across various industries in China, South-East Asia and Europe. Over the years, he has gathered a strong skill set in executing large on & offline operations by focusing on customer experience, eCommerce, on-demand services and digital transformation. He is currently heading foodpanda’s Qcommerce (Quick Commerce) Marketplace for 3rd party retailers, working with more than 50,000 vendors across APAC.

Rakesh leads the Consumer Markets practice in South East Asia in PwC’s Strategy& practice, based in Kuala Lumpur –and leads the (x-sector) Strategy& team in Malaysia and Vietnam. He brings 15+ years experience serving Corporate, PE and Trading House clients in the Retail, Consumer and Leisure sectors on Strategy (revenue management, route-to-market, channel and pricing optimization);M&A/Deals (portfolio strategy, diligence, post-deal value creation, integration)and Transformation (sustainability and organizational structure) topics –typically working with executives on the Board and across the C-suite (in Finance, Strategy, Commercial).He serves large multinational accounts (examples: F&B, Tobacco, Cosmetics)on Strategy topics and in account leadership –building & deepening C-level relationships; marshalling firm engagement on local priorities; sharing global best practices and driving coordination and capability exchange with international teams. He also serves as the Asia-Pacific account leader (across all lines of service) for two of PwC’s largest global priority accounts in the Consumer Products sector.Earlier, in Japan and the U.S., he served marquee global clients on Strategy and Transformation initiatives. He was part of the founding team of PwC’s U.S. Deals Strategy practice, where he advised PEs and Trading Houses on portfolio strategy, M&A diligence and execution and also, on rapid post-deal value creation. Prior to joining PwC, Rakesh worked across multiple sectors –from investment banking and capital markets (J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank), to non-profit (Teach For India) and international development (Asian Development Bank). Rakesh holds an MBA degree (Strategy, Finance) from the Kellogg School of Management, and a BS degree (Actuarial Science, Finance) from New York University. He was named a Global Shaper by the World Economic Forum in 2013.

Relevant project leadership:

• Advised the board of a U.S. beverage alcohol player on extending into a new spirits category –defined target business profile, built unconstrained views on attractive pockets, evaluated capability strengths and gaps, prioritized ways-to-play and presented a phased roadmap to launch and grow, including investment and M&A plans (growth strategy)
• Led the diligence and subsequent integration of a major U.S. acquisition for a global tobacco player –and later advised on strategy and M&A efforts for the development of their reduced risk portfolio, serving the C-suite (growth strategy)
• Supported an FMCG leader in Japan with developing an effective direct-to-consumer strategy –reviewing consumer purchase behaviors, product and platform requirements and anticipated business impact (digital, e-commerce)
• Assisted a European footwear retailer with refreshing their online retail strategy across priority markets, through offline-to-online transitions using couponing and customer data to develop a e-commerce proposition (digital, e-commerce)
• Advised a distressed specialty retailer on a turnaround strategy –evaluated market demand, brand positioning and competitor strategies to refresh pricing architecture and promotion spend (turnaround, distressed situations)
• Developed a transformation roadmap for a PE-owned casino chain –assessed gamer behaviors, location performance, revenue mix and cost models to advise on an end-to-end organizational realignment to streamline the cost structure and reinvest in capabilities that support further prospects for profitable growth (transformation, organization)

Connie Kwok is an Expert Partner and a member of Bain & Company’s Retail practice.  

She has more than 15 years of experience in industry, consulting, and startup roles, specializing in e-commerce, digital innovation and transformation, product management, automation, and strategic partnerships. Her client portfolio spans retail product categories, including consumer electronics, toys, FMCG, grocery, and media. 

She began her career as a consultant at Bain & Company and most recently served as a general manager and technical advisor at Amazon. 

Connie holds an M.Sc. in Management from the London School of Economics and a B.A. (Hons) Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Oxford. 

Sarah is a Manager based in YCP Solidiance’s Singapore office, bringing over five years of extensive consulting experience throughout Southeast Asia. Her expertise spans a range of areas, including post-merger integration (PMI), new business development, and the formulation and execution of effective business strategies. Sarah has been instrumental in leading various projects, where she has been deployed to companies across different sectors, including mid to large-sized firms in the consumer goods and B2B industries. She holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from the National University of Singapore.

With a robust professional background and extensive experience in Marketing, Retail & Ecommerce, Tran Nguyen Phi Long has displayed a proven track record for his Multidisciplinary Strategic Marketing Management by being a Senior Marketing Head of many leading Vietnamese companies and multinational corporations, namely Nhommua, Lazada, Central Group, Pharmacity, and PNJ.

He is well-known for his prestigious lifetime Award as "Excellent Marketing Leadership" by Philip Kotler in 2022 and many other International Marketing Awards such as the "Marketing Initiative of the Year” in the Retail Asia Awards 2023, the “Best Retail Marketing – Gold trophy” in the Marketing Events Awards 2022

He is also an enthusiastic leader in social activities. Currently, he plays important roles as the Head of Communication Department of Vietnam Sales & Marketing Club (CSMO), Member of Executive Board of Vietnam Advertising Association (VAA), Member of Executive Board of Ho Chi Minh City Advertising Association (HAA)

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 

Since graduating with a Master of Interior Architecture from the renowned Penninghen School, Paris, Thomas has over 10 years of multi-disciplinary cross-sector experience. An innovative and highly creative ‘self-starter’, Thomas leads projects from visioning and concept design through to completion. He has led the design of significant commercial projects around the world, particularly in APAC and MENA, with an emphasis on large scale public spaces, with highly choreographed visitor journeys and immersive brand experience. Signature projects include Retail and Mixed-use Developments, Hotels, Residences, Corporate Headquarters, Offices, Airports, Universities and Museums. Passionate about storytelling through design and visual narratives, for every project Thomas creates a meaningful project narrative that establishes a brand defining design direction. Thomas is a great communicator, fluent in English and French languages. Skilled in design strategy, project visioning and creative thinking, Thomas brings these attributes to the design leadership of each project together with an understanding of the user experience, co-creation methodology, direction and mentoring of the design team. Thomas keeps up to date with a knowledge of global trends in retail with a forward looking approach to sustainability. With a collaborative approach Thomas ensures that client, stakeholders and design team unite around a strong creative concept to drive the project to a successful completion.

Mehdi is a Partner based in Thailand. He has over 11 years of experience in marketing sales, distribution, e-commerce and digital within the FMCG and healthcare industries across Asia, Europe and Latin America. Mehdi brings with him an excellent track record in strategy formulation, business development and large-scale expansion growth within top tier MNCs in the personal care, healthcare and food industry. He holds a B.A. in International Business Management from Edinburgh Napier University and a Masters in Management from EDHEC Business School. 

With over 2 decades at the forefront of enabling e-commerce industry in India and South East Asia, Vidmay is currently responsible for leading eBay’s Cross Border Business across 180 emerging markets including India, South East Asia and the eBay’s Global Emerging markets, a region with high potential in cross-border ecommerce that includes Eastern Europe, Israel, Middle East, Africa and Latin America driving retail export from these markets through eBay’s global marketplaces.  

He has led multiple businesses within eBay spanning Ecommerce, Strategy, P&L General Management, Cross Border Trade, Policy Advisory, Online Payments and Strategic Investment & Partnerships. During his tenure, he has overseen the eBay Strategic Partnership and Investment in Flipkart (India’s Leading eCommerce platform) and was responsible for transforming eBay’s business in India and South East Asia.  

Vidmay is a seasoned leader with entrepreneurial drive and proven track record in innovation and driving businesses at scale. He takes an active interest in policy and process changes to enable ease of online exports by working closely with policy makers, governmental agencies and industry bodies. He is a member of the Confederation of Indian Industry’s National Committee on eCommerce and Past Chair of Exports Sub-Committee.  

An avid traveler, pet lover and foodie, Vidmay is a self-confessed connoisseur of biryani, one of the most traditional Indian dishes. He balances this with an active interest in Cricket and Formula 1. Vidmay works out of Singapore, accompanied by his wife and daughter and is a proud pet parent.  

Samir is EY Asean Workforce Advisory Leader and Singapore Government & Public Sector Leader, Ernst & Young Advisory Pte. Ltd. with extensive consulting experience in helping organizations to develop business strategies linked to people-organization dynamics across Southeast Asia. He has worked on numerous competency, performance and rewards design and implementation projects for public-, private- and third-sector clients.

His experience covers all aspects of human resources consulting, ranging from organization structuring and manpower planning to job redesign and the future of work. Other areas include creating differentiated reward programs, developing a high-performance culture, integration of performance and reward and talent programs, as well as HR process review and audit.

Samir holds an MBA from XLRI, India.

Matty Lin is the General Manager, Global Business Solutions, at TikTok Southeast Asia. Matty is a global business leader with over 15 years of experience in the advertising and technology industry. He has held various leadership roles across sales, business development and sales enablement functions. 

Matty is a tenured TikToker. He joined Bytedance in 2018 and spent the first five years building and scaling US sales organisation and global business operations based in New York. He moved to Singapore in 2023 to lead the Southeast Asia Ads business, focusing on building and strengthening relationships with brands, agencies and partners to drive revenue growth and business success.

Quan Yao is a Senior Analyst (Channels) at Euromonitor International, leading research for the Retail and Digital Consumer sectors in Southeast Asia. He has a keen interest in the impact of retail digitalisation and evolving business models, and its implications for businesses and consumers within the region. 

Over his time in the company Quan Yao has engaged and advised clients on the industries’ competitive landscape, market trends & strategic outlook through his analysis on Euromonitor's Passport database, external publications, and client and industry conference engagements. He is the Co-Author of Euromonitor’s “Top 100 Retailers in Asia Pacific 2021” White Paper, and his sector commentary has been featured on prominent regional publications such as Singapore Business Review, Tech in Asia and DealStreetAsia. 

Quan Yao holds a Bachelor of Business Management degree with a Double Major in Operations Management and Analytics from the Singapore Management University. 

With an extensive track record spanning nearly two decades in the cards and payments sector, Ms. Ceridwen has held influential roles in prominent institutions including DBS, HSBC, and MasterCard. Notably, she led the consumer payments division for Southeast Asia and later managed the Credit Cards portfolio for the wider APAC region during her tenure at MasterCard. Just prior to joining the new leadership team at DCS Card Centre, she was part of the APAC founding team for Railsbank, a pioneering Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) fintech headquartered in the UK, where she played an integral role as its Strategic Partnerships lead driving the growth and market expansion pillar for the business. 

In her current capacity as the head of Payments & Innovation as well as Brand & Marcom at DCS, Ms. Ceridwen assumes the pivotal responsibility of generating new revenue streams for this 50-year old financial institution that used to only issue credit cards for Diners Club International. In just slightly more than a year helming two very key roles, she has launched several innovative product features that allows DCS to penetrate new payment sectors including Web3. Under her direct leadership is also the strategic direction of the organization's brand management and communications strategy – she drove the entire rebranding and PR efforts from the former Diners Club Singapore to DCS Card Centre. She holds a Bachelor of Business (Honours) from NTU and is a distinguished graduate of the SMU Women & Leadership Program. 

Achint Setia is the Chief Revenue and Marketing Officer (CRMO) at ZALORA. In his dual roles, he leads ZALORA’s Cluster business across Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Taiwan in addition to leading the Revenue and Marketing function across the ZALORA group.

Dynamic and entrepreneurial, Achint brings with him over 17 years of experience in scaling businesses in consumer tech and media. As an avid speaker and passionate storyteller, he brings bottom-up business building expertise in consumer tech and media with cross-functional experience in analytics, marketing, operations, strategy, content and product development. Prior to joining ZALORA, he took on multiple leadership roles at Indian fashion e-commerce platform, Myntra, where he headed the company's marketing and social commerce business. Achint has also held senior roles at other notable companies such as Senior Vice President and Head of Digital Ventures at leading Indian media house, Viacom18 Media, and as a management consultant at global management consulting firm, McKinsey & Company.

Achint is an alumnus of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business LEAD Program, with a MBA from the Indian School of Business, and holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering from Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology (NSIT), University of Delhi. Outside of work, he enjoys reading philosophy, playing tabla, and bingeing sci-fi content.

An entrepreneur at heart with over 20 years of experience across various industries ranging from FMCG, Retail, CPG, Consumer Electronics, Food & Beverage, Real Estate, EdTech, Gaming and E-commerce Startups. I have built and led high performance teams around Indian Subcontinent, Middle East, and Southeast Asia. I am known in my professional circles for launch to scale of New Business, change management and Turnaround of business verticals to profitability and leadership capabilities in seamlessly bringing all functions of the company into top gear. 

I speak regularly at Industry events and talk about Digital Transformation, Business Turnaround and Leadership. I have coached over 40+ Sales teams across multiple markets and industries and hold two patents in technology. 

Cheryl is a consumer insight expert who delivers out of the box ideas for her clients and challenges clients to leverage their strategies and pay attention to market research methodologies that matters the most for their projects. Using real survey data examples, Cheryl sheds light on how invaluable research brings to your organization , and to positively impact your brand.

Starting out as a 14 hour a day door to door top-performing salesman selling encyclopedias at the age of 19, I am have built my career is the sales and marketing line.

Post graduating from university at the age of 20, I started out my working career as a strategist at a mainboard-listed IT company which built defense technologies and was promoted to Head of Strategy within three years. As the Head of Strategy, I  was responsible for business planning, market communications and investor relations.

My entrepreneurial bug hit me and I started two companies. The first HungryGoWhere became Singapore’s top search engines and was eventually sold to SingTel. The second company which I co-founded, HungryBBQ is one of the Singapore’s largest supplies of meat today.

Since SingTel bought HungryGoWhere in 2012, I have been serving multiple roles as Director of Sales as well as Director of Product Marketing for the past eight years and have been responsible for bringing the business to new heights by finding new revenue streams. . Building and training a sales team from scratch upon joining the organization in 2012, grew the business by more than 300% and received the SingTel CEO Leadership Award for Business Excellence in August 2017.

In June 2022, I was the second employee of NYSE listed VIPSHOP in Southeast Asia and was tasked with building the entire commercial team from scratch and launching its foray into Southeast Asia, starting with Singapore and Malaysia. In 2023, I was named Regional Director for Partnerships as I focused my efforts on partnering with various organisations to grow our user database.

On a more personal note, I am both left and right brain, and am both an avid internationally ranked chess player as well as a member of the International Thespian Honor Society and have a penchant for the Fine Arts. I have acted in numerous plays, the last being Thorton Wilder’s Our Town which was performed in Hawaii. I have also performed stand-up comedy on several occasions both in the USA and Singapore and  was also a champion of the Asian Wall Street Journal Stock Picking Challenge.
I was previously an ambassador for Total Defence 2010. My life is featured in the best selling book "Success Blueprint" which published in 2010.

As the founder of Totem Media, Chris is an experienced consultant and speaker in the worlds of brand strategy, digital transformation and marketing innovation.  

Over 20+ years Chris has helped some of the world's top brands achieve meaningful breakthroughs in China and around Asia, with particular experience in DTC, AI (bots) and Web 3.0 (AR/VR/XR).  

Totem provides clients and audiences with glimpses into the future, and offers tangible actions to help brands stay a step (or two) ahead.