Description

This SBE Committee event is part two of a series focused on starting, scaling, going to market, and stabilizing a small business/startup. This event centers on moving beyond the drawing board and developing a business successfully. Our expert panelists will engage in a moderated discussion on accessing mentorships, talent, and other support. Our goal is to help the audience tackle challenges related to business alignment, management, internal processes, and more. Our experienced speakers will share their insights on topics such as innovation and business model development.

About the speakers:
Chris Aurand, Ph.D., Open Innovation Leader, Thai Union Group PCL. In his role as Open Innovation Leader, Chris is focused on executing Thai Union's open innovation strategy, working collaboratively with internal R&D stakeholders to understand their innovation needs and drive external collaboration. He is responsible for building the long-term strategy SPACE-F, Thailand's first food tech incubator and accelerator. SPACE-F is a partnership between Thai Union, ThaiBev, Mahidol University and The National Innovation Agency of Thailand, established to build Thailand as the Foodtech startup hub. In addition, he is part of Thai Union's Corporate Venture Capital team. Prior to joining the Thai Union Group, Chris led the innovation sourcing team of Mitr Phol Group where he focused on building international collaborations to create new business opportunities. Chris obtained his PhD. in Food Science from Cornell University, USA, and holds a B.Sc. (Honours) in Food Science from the University of Guelph, Canada.

Gagan Singh, Founder and CEO, WOWS Global. Gagan Singh is the CEO of WOWS Global, which he founded. He started his career in corporate finance with Vedanta Resources, a UK based conglomerate before moving to Southeast Asia to work for Polyplex. Later on, he became a Partner & CFO at Inspire Ventures where he invested in startups such as a Commerce, Deliveree, Super Awesome, Totally Awesome, and Softbaked. In 2014, Gagan joined the founding team of Deliveree, a B2B logistics firm in Southeast Asia, where he served as Group CFO and Board Member. He successfully raised over 120M+ USD for the company before resigning to build his next venture.

Lloyd Vatanakovarun, Executive Director, Ananda Development and COO, xLab Digital. Lloyd is an Executive Director at Ananda Development and COO of its wholly owned subsidiary xLab Digital. The mission of xLab is to establish a new S-Curve for Ananda. In addition, Khun Lloyd is a secretary to Innovation Club Thailand, an association comprising of private and public organizations to drive innovation progress in the country.