Design Leadership driven by Business Strategy.

I moved from product management into design over a decade ago, driven by a desire to be closer to where the systems fail real people. Since then, I've used design not just to improve products, but to originate and scale new ones — typically taking on leadership roles where design needed to be established and grown as a strategic function.

At Jiva (an Olam venture), I built the design team to 30+ across Singapore, India, and Indonesia. Our work supported a $100M+ ARR business and reached over 150,000 smallholder farming families.

At Agency (ex-IDEO), I co-led Singapore's redesign of diabetes care, spanning community, clinic, hospital, and insurance systems.

Before that, I led a business turnaround at Buuuk — doubling revenue, growing to a new office in Vietnam, and launching high-impact products like Daimler's regional sales platform and NEA's public apps (serving 1M+ daily users).

I've built design teams across Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, India and Philipines. These teams have helped bring to life services in agriculture, healthcare, public infrastructure, and finance.

I have also been speaking regularly at events around the world for the past 20 years, you'll find a selection of my talks and appearances on this site.

Recent
Highlights

Head of Design at Jiva (OLAM)

Joining as one of the early members of the leadership team, I set up the design & research org from scratch to 30+ members across India, Indonesia, Singapore.

  • Drove design strategy contributing to $100M+ ARR and over 700 employees.
  • Successfully co-managed $5M+ annual Product-Design-Tech budget (140-person division).
  • Spearheaded design initiatives impacting 150k+ farmers, boosting their earnings ~25%.
  • Shaped company strategy through defining and leading critical new product/service lines.

Senior Design Lead at Agency (ex IDEO)

I joined the ex-IDEO team in Singapore to lead multi-disciplinary projects. Most of my time was spent working with Temasek Holdings to define the future of Diabetes healthcare for Singapore — from the community, to clinics to hospital care.

  • Led a multi-disciplinary team (5 designers, 5 experts) on a year-long strategic project designing diabetes care solutions for the Singapore Govt/Temasek.
  • The project influenced acquisition of a clinic chain for service model prototyping (launched as "Ripple" 2022).
  • Also co-led projects for defining service standards at Singapore Power & curriculum development at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

Director at Buuuk

Three years after first joining Buuuk, I took over the studio to help grow it further. Along with doing some amazing work, I transformed Buuuk from a dev house to a design-led studio, making design the primary revenue driver.

  • Achieved business turnaround, doubling revenue to SGD 3M+ ARR in 3 years.
  • Expanded the studio team threefold and established Vietnam office for scaling & efficiency.

Notable projects:

  • Daimler: Sales platform for 5k+ personnel across Asia.
  • NEA: Apps serving 1M+ monthly users (handled 1M+ sessions/24h in crisis); featured in '50 Years of Design in Singapore'.
  • Award-winning apps including Weatherlah (used for Apple Watch launch (SG)).

Work
History

  • Jiva — Singapore

    Head of Design — May 2021 to Apr 2025

  • Agency (ex IDEO) — Singapore

    Senior Design Lead — Aug 2019 to Jan 2020

  • Buuuk — Singapore

    Director (Design) — May 2016 to Jul 2019

    Head of Design — Jan 2013 to May 2016

  • Bubble Motion — Singapore

    Director, Product Management — Sep 2012 to Dec 2013

    Sr Product Manager — May 2011 to Sep 2012

  • Buuuk — Singapore

    Sr Product Manager — Oct 2010 to Apr 2011

  • Opera Software — Norway

    Product Manager — Aug 2007 to Apr 2010

    Web Evangelist — Jun 2006 to Aug 2008

  • CueBlocks — India

    Web Designer & Developer — Jun 2005 to Apr 2006

Beyond
Work

Speaking at universities and events across the globe for over a decade on topics covering Usability, Research, Prototyping, Inspiration & Collaboration Across Teams:

  • Over 70 conferences and events in Singapore, UK, Germany, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Brazil, Vietnam and India.
  • Lectures and Workshops at universities across Norway, Sweden, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Singapore & India.

A detailed list of my talks and appearances is available here.

Education

  • Punjab Technical University — India

    Bachelor in Technology of Computer Sciences — June 2005