The Founders

Chris Fong

Over 15 years of deep expertise in business consulting and technology reviews from building business lines & practices for top tier institutions (KPMG, PwC, GIC, global and regional financial institutions)
Open Innovation student and advocate, deep tech startup company builder & accelerator alumni (Entrepreneur First)
Masters of Science in Technopreneurship & Innovation from leading university in Singapore (NTU)

Over 21 years of entrepreneurship - Cofounded, built, scaled and sold Yolk Pte Ltd (Singapore SME 1000), CEO of Grey Digital (SEA), Chief Strategy & Digital Officer of Grey Group Malaysia
Consultant and mentor at LKY School of Public Policy and Nanyang Polytechnic in Singapore
Business mentor and advisor to conversational A.I. startup

Over 15 years of consulting, SAP implementation for MNCs like Shell, DKSH, BHP Group, focused on big data mining, advanced modelling and visualisation for global business intelligence, technology reporting and advanced analytics

Expert in transformative data-driven intelligence to improve business productivity, operations efficiencies, risk and compliance management across global supply chain, finance, inventory, asset from SAP, non-SAP services and IoT, automating predictive machine learning forecasts

Chair of Association of International Research and Development Centers for Agriculture (AIRCA), an alliance focused on increasing global food security by supporting smallholder agriculture within healthy, sustainable and climate-smart landscapes
Immediate past CEO at Crops For the Future Research Centre (CFF), leading innovative research on underutilised crops that is responsive to societal demands
Previous Vice Provost (Research and Internationalisation) at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus

Over a decade of legal experience in investments, technology, IP and licensing of Agriscience/ business, online and tech platforms
Represented and acted for both investee/startups and investors such as government funding agencies, PE & VC funds, family office, in various fundraising cycles
Extensive regulatory experience in advising digital businesses and emerging technologies such as equity crowdfunding, peer to peer, and robo-advisory platforms

Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Padang & Co, driving open innovation in Food and AgriTech and delivering “innovation-as-a-service” for this space in Singapore and Southeast Asia
Launched LEVEL3 enterprise-led coworking model with Unilever Foundry, enabling collaborative innovation with corporate partners such as Cargill and Syngenta
Launched the first pan-Asia (also Singapore’s first) AgriTech accelerator —Digital ASEAN Program — with MUFG, Grow Asia, and Yara
Designed and facilitated a number of innovation initiatives, e.g. CSIRO Food for Health, Grow Asia Hackathons, Rabobank SustainableAg Asia, etc.
A multi-industry veteran and the immediate past President of the Australian Chamber of Commerce in Singapore