On Call with Insignia Ventures

About On Call with Insignia Ventures

Singapore and Southeast Asia's longest running VC podcast! Previous guests include Dianping founder Zhang Tao, Nobel Laureate in economics Michael Spence, MUFG APAC Chief of Staff and Mars Growth founder Osamu Abe, Kaszek Ventures and MercadoLibre founder Hernan Kazah, Endeavor Catalyst managing partner Allen Taylor, monashees founding partner Eric Acher, Tao of Alibaba author and Alibaba Global Initiatives’ Brian Wong, JETRO Director General of Innovation Takeo Nakajima, Ard Financial Group executive chairman Ganhuyag, Appier founder Chih Han Yu, and Carro founder Aaron Tan.

Publisher

Insignia Ventures Partners

Category

business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

5 Apr 2020

Latest episode

7 Jul 2026

Latest episodes

217 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   7 Jul 2026

   Google's first APAC regional head of sustainability Spencer Low on the region's key priorities

   Continue the conversation with Spencer at this year's Business & Sustainability Programme Asia Seminar by the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) (https://www.cisl.cam.ac.uk/education/executive-education/bsp/asia-seminar)Join us on call with Spencer Low, Google’s first-ever Head of Regional Sustainability for Asia Pacific and an alumnus and faculty member of the Business & Sustainability Programme by the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, on what it really takes to drive sustainability impact at one of the largest tech companies in the world with a scope over one of the world’s most complex regions. Timestamps (0:55): Introduction to Spencer (1:44): Consulting Roots at Bain (4:20): From Strategy to CSO at SATS (6:29): Data, Reporting, and the CDO Role (10:45): Discovering the BSP (14:24): Joining Google APAC (17:50): APAC Priorities and the Art of Influence (22:16): AI for Sustainability (27:33): Corporate Sustainability Maturity About our Guest Spencer Low is Google’s Head of Regional Sustainability for Asia Pacific, the first person to hold this role. Based at Google’s APAC headquarters in Singapore, he leads sustainability strategy and programmes across carbon, circular economy, water, product integration, reporting, and employee engagement for a region spanning India, Japan, and the full breadth of Southeast Asia. Before joining Google in 2024, Spencer served as Chief Sustainability Officer and CEO of Travel Retail at SATS Ltd., the Singapore-listed aviation services and food solutions company, where he built and led the sustainability function through the company’s post-pandemic recovery and a major global acquisition. Prior to SATS, he held senior management roles at Booking Holdings and Rakuten Group, and spent the first decade of his career at Bain & Company, rising from associate consultant to manager. Spencer is an alumnus and faculty member of the Cambridge Prince of Wales Business and Sustainability Programme (BSP), run by the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL). He holds a Master’s in International Affairs from Sciences Po Paris and an MBA from the Ivey Business School, Canada. Directed by Paulo Joquiño Produced by Paulo Joquiño Follow us on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/insignia-ventures/?viewAsMember=true) for more updates Disclaimer: The views in this podcast are those of the contributors, and don’t necessarily represent those of CISL, the University of Cambridge, or Insignia Ventures Academy, and should not be taken as advice or a recommendation. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, tax, or business advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any Insignia Ventures fund. Any and all opinions shared in this episode are solely personal thoughts and reflections of the guest and the host.

2. 

   25 Jun 2026

   Smart cities need smart citizens | Innovators in Sustainability Episode 1 with Jason Pomeroy

   Join this year's Business & Sustainability Programme Asia Seminar (https://www.cisl.cam.ac.uk/education/executive-education/bsp/asia-seminar) by the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL)In this first episode of a miniseries produced in partnership with the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) and Insignia Ventures Academy, host Paulo Aquino speaks with Professor Jason Pomeroy,k founding principal of Pomeroy Studio, founder of Pomeroy Academy, and CISL Fellow. The conversation traces Jason's evolution from architect to interdisciplinary sustainability leader, beginning with how his Cambridge master's degree opened a systems-thinking approach to the built environment that conventional practice could not provide. Jason explains how his signature four-sphere model, engaging civil society, state, academia, and industry simultaneously, shaped the Idea House in Malaysia, one of Asia's first zero-carbon homes, and how that same methodology has since scaled across Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Timestamps (1:17): Introduction to Jason (3:42): Cambridge Spark Moment (7:57): Building an Interdisciplinary Practice (10:24): Asia Innovation and Net Zero Homes (16:44): Designing for Sweden (18:45): Academy: Bridging Worlds (21:00): Digital Twins Explained (26:02): Smart Cities Need Smart Citizens (30:02): Automation and CISL WrapAbout our GuestProfessor Jason Pomeroy is an award-winning architect, academic, author, and TV presenter regarded as one of the world's leading experts in sustainable design. He is the founding principal of Pomeroy Studio, an interdisciplinary sustainable design and research firm based in Singapore, and the founder of Pomeroy Academy, a platform for sustainability education and research in the built environment. Jason holds professorships at the University of Nottingham and James Cook University, and leads a sustainable urbanism module on CISL's Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment (IDBE) master's programme at the University of Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. Jason gained his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from the Canterbury School of Architecture, a master's degree from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD from the University of Westminster. He is the author of five books on sustainable design and urbanism, including Idea House: Future Tropical Living Today (2011), The Skycourt and Skygarden: Greening the Urban Habitat (2014), and Hardware, Software, Heartware: Digital Twinning for More Sustainable Built Environments (2023). He has hosted four architecture and urbanism television series — Smart Cities 2.0, City Time Traveller, City Redesign, and Futuropolis — which have aired across Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. Directed by Paulo Joquiño Produced by Paulo Joquiño Follow us on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/insignia-ventures/?viewAsMember=true) for more updates Disclaimer: The views in this podcast are those of the contributors, and don’t necessarily represent those of CISL, the University of Cambridge, or Insignia Ventures Academy, and should not be taken as advice or a recommendation. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, tax, or business advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any Insignia Ventures fund. Any and all opinions shared in this episode are solely personal thoughts and reflections of the guest and the host.

3. 

   23 Jun 2026

   Dr Yanan Wu on why Surfin cannot remain a fintech as it grows beyond 100M users across 12 markets

   In this fourth conversation between Paulo Joquino and Dr. Yanan Wu, CEO and founder of Surfin, the two catch up at a pivotal moment in the company's trajectory. Nine years after its founding, Surfin, the Singapore-headquartered fintech serving over 100 million users across 12 markets, is entering its second chapter: one defined by agentic AI, fintech as a service (FaaS), and expansion into developed markets. Timestamps (1:50): Surfin Snapshot Today (2:39): Recent Milestones (6:10): Japan Launch Focus (9:55): Serving Migrants' Needs (13:11): ABCD: Agentic Inclusion (16:20): Differentiation, Economics, and Data (20:00): Institutions Adopting AI Agents (25:31): Tailwinds and the Path Forward About our Guest Dr. Yanan Wu is the CEO and founder of Surfin, a Singapore-headquartered fintech platform dedicated to financial inclusion through AI and agentic technology. A former nuclear physicist and Wall Street quantitative portfolio manager, Yanan spent over 15 years managing institutional and high-net-worth assets in North America and Asia before founding Surfin in 2017, inspired by a stark encounter with inequality in Jakarta. Under his leadership, Surfin has grown from a regional vision into a global operation serving over 100 million users across 12 markets on three continents, having disbursed over US$4 billion in loans to underserved young consumers and achieving 50% year-on-year revenue growth with double-digit net profit margins for four consecutive years. Yanan holds a PhD in physics and was a postdoctoral researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory and IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. He is a frequent speaker at global forums including the World Economic Forum in Davos and the New York Stock Exchange International Day. Directed by Paulo Joquiño Produced by Paulo Joquiño Follow us on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/insignia-ventures/?viewAsMember=true) for more updates The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, tax, or business advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any Insignia Ventures fund. Any and all opinions shared in this episode are solely personal thoughts and reflections of the guest and the host.

Who has been a guest on On Call with Insignia Ventures

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Bintang Hidayanto
• Timur Nugroho
• Tianwei Liu
• Hendra Kwik
• Pat Patel

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

27,375

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Spotify

5.0 / 5

8 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 71 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

81

Social presence

0

YouTube

76

Engagement

76