Kopi Time E188 - Digital Assets and Currencies with Circle’s Chengyi Ong

We discuss fintech innovation within the context of geoeconomics and AI with Chengyi Ong, Director of Policy and Regulatory Strategy for APAC at Circle, the company behind USDC stablecoin. We begin by taking stock of the depth and breadth of global digital transactions across industrial and develop…

Kopi Time E187 - India’s Path Forward with Chief Economic Advisor A Nageswaran

In this special episode, we feature a conversation recorded recently in Delhi with the government of India’s Chief Economic Advisor, Dr Anantha Nageswaran. I began by asking Dr Nageswaran for an overview of the current state of the economy. We then move on to buffers, from energy to financial, to d…

Kopi Time E186 - A report on SE Asia 2026-2035

This podcast is about a collaboration. Bain & Company, DBS, and Vriens & Partners joined hands to prepare this report on Southeast Asia, with analysis of recent developments and scenarios about the next decade. I worked with Bain’s Ravi Vijayaraghavan, Senior Partner, and Hans Vriens, Founder and M…

Kopi Time E185 - US Election Outlook with Steve Okun

Veteran US political and policy analyst Steve Okun, founder and CEO of APAC Advisors, joins Kopi Time to offer a cogent analysis of the US political cycle. We begin by assessing the gravity of the November mid-term elections, going over the domestic and foreign policy implications. Steve then detai…

Kopi Time E184 - US Trip Notes

I just came back from a trip to the US, where I had the privilege to interact with a number of public and private sector officials. In this podcast, I lay out eight key takeaways, all under the overarching shadow of tense geopolitics and ballooning debt burden. (i) AI and the economy, (ii) the doll…

Kopi Time E183 - Regional Outlook with Ethan Wu

We welcome Ethan Wu, Asia business and finance editor at The Economist, to Kopi Time. We cover Asia’s remarkably strong exports cycle, regional resilience to this year’s energy shock, issues related to trade, tech, and national security, frictions with the US, China over-capacity, direction of RMB,…

Kopi Time E182 - AI Cyber Risks with Gaurav Keerthi

Gaurav Keerthi, CEO of StrongKeep, a Singapore-based cybersecurity startup that provides SMEs with AI-driven security and compliance platforms, returns to Kopi Time to discuss the topic of the moment. In this wide ranging conversation, we begin by talking about why secure AI is a fundamentally diff…

Kopi Time E181 - Singapore's Economic Path with Manu Bhaskaran

Manu Bhaskaran, founding director and head of Centennial Asia Advisors, returns to Kopi Time ahead of Singapore’s 61st birthday. We begin by taking stock of Singapore’s recent economic performance, with growth accelerating and investments surging. Manu walks us through the sectoral outcomes and pro…

Kopi Time E180 - Tech Wave with Bain's Ravi Vijayaraghavan

In this episode, we get expert view on the ongoing, historic tech wave. Ravi Vijayaraghavan, head of APAC Technology & Cloud Services practice at Bain and Company, offers a wide range of insights, starting with the implication of the unprecedented scale of capital spending on AI build-out taking pl…

Kopi Time E179: Energy markets with Vandana Hari

We discuss energy market outlook with Vandana Hari, founder of Vanda Insights, a Singapore-based provider of energy market intelligence. We begin with the crude and refined product bottleneck created by the virtual closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and what it means for Asia and Europe. We then delv…