Overview
Metaverse and Web3.0 have become the latest buzzwords. Besides large technology companies such as Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Tencent announcing ambitious plans to invest in the Metaverse, we have also observed consumer brands such as Nike and Gucci taking an interest in the space. Some have described the Metaverse as akin to the Internet revolution we saw in the 1990s, but beyond gaming, NFTs...
Metaverse and Web3.0 have become the latest buzzwords. Besides large technology companies such as Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Tencent announcing ambitious plans to invest in the Metaverse, we have also observed consumer brands such as Nike and Gucci taking an interest in the space.
Some have described the Metaverse as akin to the Internet revolution we saw in the 1990s, but beyond gaming, NFTs and virtual lands, what do Metaverse and Web3.0 really mean to businesses? How and when should businesses and corporates partake in the Metaverse and Web3.0 movement?
Date: 27 July 2022, Wednesday
Time: 7:30pm - 8:30pm (Singapore Time / UTC +8)
Event Programme:
7:30pm - 7:40pm: Opening Remarks by NVIDIA
7:40pm - 7:45pm: Welcome Remarks by Original Startups Collective (OSC)
7:45pm - 8:20pm: Panel Discussion and Q&A on Metaverse and Web3.0 with:
- Kai Jie NG, Director (Open Innovation Platform + PIXEL Innovation Space), Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA)
- Dr Ettikan Kandasamy Karuppiah, Chief Technologist, NVIDIA Asia Pacific South
- Triveni Rajagopal, Personal Care Digital Transformation Lead
- Arun Sugumaran, Co-Founder & CEO, AWSt
- Moderator: Edmas Neo, Head of Transformation Office, Mandai Wildlife Group and Chief of Council, Original Startups Collective (OSC)
Speakers' Profiles:
Kai Jie, IMDA Director, Open Innovation Platform + PIXEL Innovation Space
Kaijie is passionate about democratising corporate innovation. In IMDA, Kaijie heads the Open Innovation Platform, which provides a structured and end to end consultancy to help Corporates diagnose their business challenges and opportunities, refine their problem statements, match with >11k innovative tech providers, prototype and commercialise their solutions. The Platform has hosted over 300 challenges worth more than $8.5m in prize money, including marquee brands such as Visa, P&G, Smith & Nephew, Singapore Airlines and Capitaland.
Kaijie also runs PIXEL, a 28k sqft space that builds this innovation community with 5G, AR/VR, Usability and Production test labs, as well as Design Thinking, UI/UX and Design Thinking programmes. Our key partners include Grab, Meta and IBM.
Kaijie was most recently seconded to Carousell Group as its first Strategy Director. His achievements include refreshing its corporate strategy and annual plans, working across 6 entities and 8 markets and 700+ employees, and its US$1.1B funding round. Distributing innovation and building more unicorns at scale, is a natural extension of this journey.
Dr Ettikan Kandasamy Karuppiah, Chief Technologist, Enterprise Business, Asia Pacific South, NVIDIA
Dr. Ettikan Kandasamy Karuppiah, Chief Technologist at NVIDIA Asia Pacific South Region works with innovators, researchers and techno-entrepreneurs to accelerate AI & GPU adaptation for their translational R&D and software solutioning needs. He has direct experience and is passionate in accelerated computing, embedded software, autonomous systems, machine learning, deep learning, solution design and development covering end-to-end needs in various industry verticals.
Currently, he guides researchers and developers at research labs, development centres and disruptive startups to implement actionable solutions for real-world problems meeting specific requirements leveraging NVIDIA GPU/DPU software/hardware capabilities. He has published numerous publications, patents and developed software libraries in past years.
Triveni Rajagopal, Personal Care Digital Transformation Lead, Unilever
Triveni has over 18 years of global experience in technology, advertising, and purpose-driven marketing industries. She has spent the last decade working at Unilever, leading the digital strategy and global campaigns for Foods and Personal Care brands. She is one of the few female leaders who has extensive experience creating digital campaigns that drive behaviour change. Today, she is responsible for Lifebuoy, Lux & Pears in Skin Cleansing, and Pepsodent in Oral Care.
Triveni brings her digital expertise, leadership, and passion for creating and building leading digital capabilities to her brands in her current role. Within Unilever, she is the go-to person for accelerating team growth and vision. She has created and developed multiple culturally diverse and geographically dispersed teams.
Triveni has won multiple industry awards, including a recent Cannes Lions award for #H4Handwashing (2021), an industry case study for behaviour change supported by digital. Her key moments include leading Unilever’s Digital Transformation programme into over 90% of the businesses in Asia and driving Lifebuoy’s public service campaigns for hygiene (on digital), at the start of the pandemic in 2020. Before joining Unilever, she has worked at Wunderman Thompson Singapore, PepsiCo as a senior digital strategist based in Shanghai and Ogilvy in Mumbai.
She is a mentor for Singaporean start-ups and a volunteer in upskilling senior citizens’ mobile literacy - especially during Covid. She can often be found indulging in Marvel movies and comics in her spare time. She is actively discovering the world of AI, VR and gaming. You can find her through her handle @Onetwotriv!
Triveni is married, with a teen son and calls Singapore home.
Arun Sugumaran, Co-Founder & CEO, AWSt
Arun is co-founder & CEO of AWSt. AWSt is building NFT infrastructure for brands and creators that increases NFT accessibility for their customers and audiences. The infrastructure focuses on enabling easy wallet creation, credit card purchases and redemptions of NFTs without the need for crypto, as well as a suite of APIs and SDKs to create metaverses that are easy to interact with.
Arun is a second-time founder and has been an entrepreneur and blockchain advocate for the past 5 years. Prior to becoming a founder, his career spanned a decade across real estate private equity and capital markets and was involved in over $4 billion worth of deals.
Moderator's Profile:
Edmus Neo, Head of Transformation Office at Mandai Wildlife Group & Chief of Council of Original Startups Collective (OSC)
Edmas is Chief of the Council of Original Startups Collective (OSC), a growing Web3.0 borderless startup community with the goal of aggregating myriad talent in the digital space, including prolific start-up owners, investors and ecosystem developers, under a vibrant Web 3.0 platform. Since 2014, he has been playing a key role in Singapore’s startup ecosystem development as Regional Director, SGInnovate and as CEO, Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE) which represented over 4500 tech startups. Edmas is also actively helping to bridge investments and sustainable startups as President of Sustainable Innovation and Investment Global Network (SIIGN), and in bridging the startup ecosystem with the sustainability and biodiversity domain in his capacity as Head of Transformation Office at Mandai Wildlife Group.
Technology:
