our TRAILBLAZERS –
asia –
Business Insider -....au
trailblazer
a
person who is the first to do something that other people do later.
She was a trailblazer as the only woman in the US Senate.
Category1.
Consumer Tech
1. Melissa Yang, Founder, Tujia
2. Akiko Naka,
Founder and CEO, Wantedly
5.
Jane Jie Sun, CEO, Trip.com
6. Kelly Zhang, CEO, China, Bytedance (Tik Tok)
7. Han
Seong-sook, s. KOREA CEO, Naver
Category2: Energy
2. Somruedee Chaimongkol,
CEO, Banpu
9. Dany Qian, Vice President, Jinko Solar
Category3: Enterprise Tech
5. Roshni Nadar,
Chairperson, HCL
Technologies
8. Winnie Lee, Cofounder and COO, Appier
10.
Lennise Ng, Cofounder and CEO, Dropee
Other Categories: 4: Finance + 5: Healthcare ....
FictionGlobal business has faced
unprecedented challenges over the past 12 months, particularly in 2020. The
scale of the change that comes from responding to these obstacles will
accelerate innovation in some companies, while others will falter.
One thing is clear – successful organisations rely on the
vision and strategy of exceptional people to drive transformation.
Business Insider’s 100 People Transforming Business series,
now in its second year, spotlights visionaries who are driving innovative changes
in their own companies that resonate across their industry.
The series spans 10 verticals, and showcases leaders from
three global regions – North America, Asia, and Europe.
Each list of 100 comprises a diverse array of influential
people, including executives from global companies, startup founders, product
and technology strategists, and industry activists.
A. Consumer
Tech
1. Melissa Yang, Founder, Tujia
When Melissa
Yang cofounded Tujia, in 2011, her business inspiration was
undeniable. Airbnb had been established three years earlier and had
revolutionised the online marketplace for vacation rentals. But the company
would not enter China until 2016.
Tujia was ready
to step in. Over the past nine years the company has become the dominant player
in the market with an estimated 60% share. Even today Airbnb has only a
fraction of Tujia’s business in the county.
But while Airbnb
may have been an inspiration for Tujia, Yang is adamant that the business model
is entirely different because of the huge differences between travellers in
China and the US.
In the
beginning, Tujia curated and managed all its properties, guaranteeing the
consistent service quality Chinese tourists were looking for. Only later, once
the platform had built trust and credibility, were privately owned and run
rentals added.
For future
growth, Yang is not only targeting the domestic market. Tujia says it plans to
triple bookings for outbound travellers on the website over the next three
years. The company has said it will expand its listings in Japan, South Korea,
and Thailand.
“We all have
curiosity about the world,” Yang tells Business Insider. “By experiencing
different places and cultures, traveling helps us get connected with more
empathy and creativity. We end up enjoying more freedom physically and
spiritually, especially in the current isolated circumstance.”
2. Akiko Naka, Founder and CEO, Wantedly
As far as
recruitment sites go, Tokyo-based Wantedly has an unusual mission
but one that resonates with younger job seekers: to create a world where work
meets passion.
Founded by Akiko
Naka, in 2010, Wantedly connects companies and prospective employees based
on their passions and interests, rather than pay or benefits.
Job postings on
the site don’t include salary details, and they don’t ask candidates to send in
their résumés. Instead, the site enables would-be employees to casually drop by
the offices of the companies they want to work for and meet the team.
“We want to
change the way job seeking is done,” Naka tells Business Insider. “That more
than just salary and benefits, it is equally important to align both companies
and job-seekers in values, mission, and purpose.”
It’s a novel
concept that’s proved successful. Wantedly has over 30,000 companies using the
platform, including Sony, Panasonic, and Uber, and has 1.2 million active users
in Japan. Last year the company made its first international expansions, into
Singapore and Hong Kong.
“We wanted to make
work more purpose-oriented in Japan, and in the process found that other
countries like Singapore and Hong Kong face the same challenges to a certain
degree,” Naka adds.
5. Jane Jie Sun, CEO, Trip.com
Jane Jie Sun leads not only the largest online travel
agency in China but one of the largest travel service providers in the world.
The group consists of a number of travel brands, with
Trip.com and Skyscanner being the most recognizable. The company originated out
of Chinese startup Ctrip, which acquired the Palo Alto-based Trip.com in 2017
and merged its businesses under the new domain.
Sun became CEO in 2016, after 11 years with the company. She
is one of just a few female tech CEOs in China and is committed to address the
gender imbalance in business leadership. As many as half of Ctrip’s employees
are now female, while females make up one third of executives in high-level
positions, an uncommon ratio among tech companies.
Last year Sun became a main supporter of the Women in Health LEAD
Fellowship at Harvard University, which aims to empower more women to become
leaders in the health industry.
And while COVID-19 is disrupting the travel sector like never
before, Sun has confidence in long-term resilience. “The current trends we’ve
observed in the China market are encouraging, and we are confident that coupled
with the guarantees, measures and innovations we’ve introduced, we’ll continue
to see promising growth and new heights for the industry in the near future,”
she tells Business Insider.
6. Kelly Zhang, CEO, China, Bytedance (Tik Tok)
Tik Tok has been
the most talked-about app of the past year. What’s less discussed is the huge
success of its parent company, ByteDance, which by January owned six of the top
10 apps in the China iOS App Store.
ByteDance in
China is headed by Kelly Zhang, who assumed the position of CEO in March, after
heading up Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
Zhang joined
ByteDance in 2014 after the company acquired a photo-sharing app she had cofounded.
She was originally in charge of ByteDance’s earliest product, Neihan Duanzi, a
video- and meme-sharing app eventually shut down by authorities in 2018
alleging “inappropriate content.”
By January of
this year she’d grown Douyin to 400 million active users, up 150 million from a
year before. In her new role she’ll be responsible for ByteDance’s products in
the domestic market, leading product management and operations, marketing, and
partnerships.
Alongside
Douyin, her brand portfolio includes Toutiao, which translates as “headlines,”
a popular China-based news-recommendation engine, and Xigua Video (“Watermelon
Video”), a platform for longer-form video content.
7. Han Seong-sook,
CEO, Naver
When Han
Seong-sook was promoted from vice president to CEO at the Korean search company
Naver in 2017, it was a transformational hire.
She was the
company’s first CEO, which carries weight given that just 2.6% of CEOs in the
country at that time were female. (Today that number is only 5%.)
With a
background in tech journalism and a successful startup under her belt, she was
also the first non-engineer to lead the country’s largest tech conglomerate, a
company she originally joined in 2007.
Under Han’s
watch, Naver has gone from strength to strength, and Naver’s stock price has
almost doubled — boosted by a strong performance during the pandemic.
Han has
continued the company’s innovation efforts beyond its core search business.
Naver has interests in multiple verticals, including its online-payments
platform Naver Pay and its popular online comic Naver Webtoon.
Key to Han’s
plans will be the evolution of Naver’s portfolio, with e-commerce platform
Smart Store high on the list. Smart Store is home to 350,000 small vendors, and
from April to June recorded its highest-ever quarterly sales.
Category2: Energy
2. Somruedee Chaimongkol, CEO, Banpu
It may seem odd
that an executive often dubbed “Asia’s first lady of coal” is attempting to
establish clean-energy credentials, but this is exactly what is happening in
the case of Somruedee Chaimongkol. Banpu, a Thailand-based energy company, is
known primarily as the country’s largest coal producer.
Since her
appointment in 2005, she has been leading the company on its “Greener and
Cleaner” strategy to drive clean and renewable energy growth. Progress has been
slow, and Banpu continues to receive criticism for pollution and environmental
damage at home and in a number of its overseas operations, such as Indonesia
and Australia.
Nevertheless,
Somruedee is working to balance the company’s core business with more
sustainable options.
At the start of
this year the company announced an investment budget of $93 million, 90% of
which would be committed to expansion of its natural gas and renewable energy
businesses. Also this year, Banpu invested almost $73 million in
Singapore-based renewable energy-solutions provider Sunseap.
“Banpu has been
transforming into a leading integrated energy solutions company in Asia-Pacific
by growing our business portfolio and ecosystem under Greener and Smarter
strategy,” Somruedee tells Business Insider. “Our utmost aim is to ensure
energy sustainability and create additional values to all our stakeholders.”
9. Dany Qian, Vice President, Jinko Solar
Dany Qian is not
only one of the most recognised faces on the renewables circuit in Asia, she’s
also an instrumental part of the continued growth of Jinko Solar, the world’s
largest producer of solar panels.
Jinko has been
growing at a breakneck speed since its launch in 2006, with Qian playing an
important role in developing and implementing the company’s market positioning
strategy. The company sells its products in 100 countries and has 15,000
employees across seven production facilities and overseas subsidiaries.
Qian is a 10-year
industry veteran and a highly visible advocate for solar power solutions and
broader global sustainability conversations. Qian was selected to represent the
Chinese solar industry at the landmark COP-21, in 2011, which resulted in the
Paris Agreement.
With Jinko
playing a huge role in providing energy alternatives around the globe, Qian has
earmarked a new roadmap for the company to have all its operations and
facilities powered by renewables by 2025.
“As the world’s
largest solar module manufacturer, it doesn’t make sense that we produce
renewable equipment but not use renewable energy ourselves,” Qian has said. “We
are well positioned to lead the industry in the pursuit of giving the next
generation a livable planet, an affordable and sustainable energy solution.”
Category3: Enterprise Tech
5. Roshni Nadar, Chairperson, HCL Technologies
Roshni Nadar
Malhotra is said to live and breathe HCL technologies — hardly surprising given
she’s the chairperson of the company and the daughter of the founder.
In July, Roshni
Nadar Malhotra succeeded her father, Shiv Nadar, as chairperson of the $10
billion IT services company HCL Technologies. The move marked the first time a
woman has led a listed IT company in India.
Nadar was not
new to HCL. As well as her family connection, she had previously held a number
of roles within the business, including executive director and CEO of HCL
Corp., HCL Technologies’ holding company.
Nadar is taking
over a company of huge scale. The company operates in 49 countries worldwide
and provides enterprise-level IT products, services, and engineering at
enterprise level to 250 of Fortune 500 companies.
It is not clear
how, if at all, Nadar’s appointment will affect HCL’s future business. Her
father will remain as chief strategy officer and the company is expected to
continue its shift from its focus on engineering services and more toward
products and IP.
8. Winnie Lee, Cofounder and COO, Appier
For a country
with a strong legacy of technologically advanced companies, Taiwan’s startup
scene is seriously lagging its Asian peers. One big exception is Appier, which
at the end of last year became the country’s second-ever unicorn.
Appier provides
AI-based solutions to the marketing industry, helping brands and retailers
predict consumer behaviour and make more precise customer decisions.
Winnie Lee has
been with the company since the start, and as COO she is responsible for
building and scaling the company’s operations, while helping to drive its
business strategy. Over the past few years, this has included a number of major
acquisitions, such as the purchase of Japan-based AI startup Emotion
Intelligence (Emin) in October of last year.
Business growth
was given a boost in November last year when Appier raised $80 million, which
brought total investment to date to $162 million and finally cemented unicorn
status. The latest round of funding is to be used to expand in Asia. In June,
Appier said that it was also beginning expansion into Europe.
“The shift to
digital business has been accelerated as people everywhere have changed how
they work, play, shop, and socialize,” Lee tells Business Insider. “AI will
continue to play a critical role in providing businesses with intelligence that
helps them adapt quickly to evolving customer needs driven by ongoing social
and economic changes.”
10. Lennise Ng, Cofounder and CEO, Dropee
In June, B2B
ecommerce platform Dropee teamed up with Malaysia’s ministry of agriculture to
collaborate on the distribution of food across the country during the pandemic.
The partnership was further recognition of the ambitious startup, headed by CEO
and cofounder Lennise Ng.
Ng founded the
company with Aizat Rahim in 2017, after the pair identified significant gaps in
the wholesale food business supply chain, particularly around connectivity.
Dropee acts as a one-stop online marketplace that connects suppliers and
retailers by creating a space where businesses can source and sell goods more
efficiently.
The platform
helps Malaysia’s agricultural and fisheries businesses open additional sales
channels by moving their operations online. Dropee also works with partners to
help users access logistics, financing, and insurance support.
Riding the
confidence of the MOA tie-up, in July Dropee raised $1.3 million in an extended
seed round. Ng says the investment will be used to automate the digital
onboarding process for its customers, as well as help with plans to expand
Dropee into Singapore.
Ng told Business
Insider, “The future of B2B trading and wholesale businesses is all about
bridging the gap between the offline and online experience. During this
pandemic, many businesses have sped up their digital adoption using Dropee. It
is a necessary move for them – after all, necessity is the mother of innovation.”
