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logo desktop enInfineon Technologies Asia Pacific announced its partnership with AIRmaker, Singapore-based Internet of Things (IoT) accelerator.

As a world leading semiconductor solution provider, Infineon will help start-ups under the AIRmaker's program to explore competitive advantage through innovative application of microelectronics and to cultivate business excellence in areas of product development, quality assurance, supply chain management and customer development.

Through partnerships, AIRmaker's program participants will be able to leverage on Infineon's design-to-manufacturing know-how, deep technical expertise in areas of automotive and power systems, embedded security, RF and sensor technologies, as well as Infineon's broad industry network. Start-ups at the stage where they can be supported by the AIRmaker+ program can leverage on Infineon as development partners, go-to-market partners, or even as suppliers or customers.

In a world of rapid urbanization and digitization, Infineon strongly believes that semiconductor solutions are contributing to a better future. These inconspicuous electronic components are regulating power at near zero loss, safe-guarding data in devices connected to cyberspace, and translating the physical world into digital world. Working with early stage companies gives Infineon the possibility to explore innovative use cases for semiconductor solutions and gain an early exposure to new ideas and market trends.


Pranjal DesaiMediaMath announced the appointment of Pranjal Desai as Country Manager, India.

This move comes on the back of the company’s exclusive partnership with India’s Zirca Digital Solutions announced earlier this year and further strengthens MediaMath’s growing presence in the market.

India’s digital ad spend is expected to surpass US$1 billion for the first time this year and is projected to continue growing at double-digit rates through 2020. With its launch in India and partnership with Zirca Digital Solutions, MediaMath is working to accelerate this growth, by way of cultivating a healthy programmatic environment that will empower brands to realize the full potential of the technology and industry.

Desai will lead MediaMath’s expanding team in India and be responsible for growing the company’s presence across the market.


Previously an Associate Director for the ad sales team at Flipkart, a leading e-commerce company in India, Desai brings with her several years of in-depth experience in building and owning relationships with large brands across various industries. Prior to Flipkart, Desai was managing Oomph Australia’s top key accounts, including Australia’s largest publishing houses and media agencies.


RTB House, a global provider of state-of-the-art retargeting technology, continues to grow its presence in Asia Pacific by expanding into India.

The move comes after a record-breaking 2016, in which the company grew its workforce by more than 40%, launched operations in MEA region, entered Australia and New Zealand and increased revenue by over 140%.

Noticeably, India has amassed an average growth rate of approximately 7% over the past two decades, and with 35% internet penetration, represents an outstanding opportunity for the e-commerce and technology sector. Against this backdrop, it has neatly set up the opportunity for RTB House to provide retailers with advanced retargeting solutions, especially within the online sphere.

Country Manager Kshitiz Randhir Shori, who has over 15 years of rich experience in the digital advertising space, will lead RTB House’s regional operations. As a former Sales Director of Criteo, Kshitiz has closely seen the digital advertising landscape transform over the years, working with all the major stakeholders of digital media.

RTB House is one of few companies in the world that has developed and implemented its own proprietary technology for purchasing advertisements in the RTB (real-time bidding) model, running 1000+ unique campaigns for global brands in more than 40 markets across Europe, LATAM, APAC and MEA region.


linda4FINGERS announced the official appointment of Linda Locke as an Independent Non-Executive Director, effective immediately. In her new role, Locke brings over 40 years of advertising and marketing experience to 4FINGERS, as the fast-casual restaurant looks to disrupt the F&B industry globally.

Locke spent over 30 years in the creative and advertising industry, including stints at Batey Advertising, Leo Burnett and Saatchi & Saatchi. During her tenure at Saatchi and Saatchi, she successfully grew the business from a S$6 million to a S$125 million agency, serving as both CEO and Creative Director. In 2006, Locke was appointed Chairman of the 4A’s advisory board, responsible for creative standards in Singapore. She has over 300 awards to her name including a string of accolades from local, regional and international shows, and is a Gold Cannes Lion winner. In addition, in 2008, Locke received the ‘Newsweek Lifetime Achievement Award” from the Singapore Advertising Hall of Fame. She held the position of Marketing Director of luxury fashion retailer Club 21 and organic store Supernature from 2008 to 2015, and was the General Manager of Club 21 Online from 2013. Since April 2017, Locke has served as Director for the Culina gourmet company and mentors small start-up businesses.

Locke graduated from Middlesex Polytechnic with an honours degree in art and design.


Conrad TallaritiAmnet, the programmatic agency for Dentsu Aegis Network, has appointed Conrad Tallariti to a new role as General Manager for Southeast Asia, lending strength to Amnet’s rapid growth since its inception in 2014, which has seen the agency expand from one to six offices in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong.

Conrad will be responsible for driving performance across five offices including Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Thailand. He will lead four key teams – client servicing, product development, analytics, and marketing and report to Anna Chan, Regional Managing Director at Amnet.

Conrad brings nine years of experience in the media and adtech industry and was most recently Head of Agencies in Southeast Asia and North Asia at LinkedIn. His experience spans across sales, strategy, content marketing, programmatic, and management in both regional and local roles at Sizmek and Microsoft, and speaks regularly at adtech conferences.

According to Dentsu Aegis Network’s Ad Spend Forecasts released in June, programmatic will be one of the sources of growth for digital ad spend this year and is set to grow by 25.4% in 2017. As the programmatic arm for the group, Amnet has seen an increasing amount of advertiser spend since 2014, leading to a rapid expansion in operations and offerings, which is why the company is bolstering its management team since the start of the year. In March, the company elevated Publisher Development Lead Mandar Kambli to a newly created role of Head of Products and Partnerships. February saw the appointment of Joshua Campanella as Regional Account Director for Southeast Asia, who also serves as Co-Chair on the Programmatic Committee of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).


John TorreyQualtrics, a leader in experience management software, announced the appointment of John Torrey, former Chief Corporate Development Officer for SAP and EVP of Corporate Strategy for Concur Technologies, as head of corporate strategy, corporate development, and business development.

In his role as head of corporate strategy, corporate development, and business development, Torrey's responsibilities include Qualtrics' strategic planning, partnerships and M&A initiatives. This new role reflects Qualtrics' deep commitment to an experience management ecosystem of consultants, developers, and system integrators to provide a wealth of expertise, technical skills and services for thousands of enterprise customers, including more than 75 percent of the Fortune 100 who are building on the Qualtrics XM Platform.

Torrey most recently ran corporate and strategic business development for SAP, where he was also Chief Strategy Officer for the company's Business Networks and Applications Group which houses the majority of SAP's public cloud application units. Before SAP, Torrey served as Executive Vice President of Corporate Strategy at Concur Technologies, where he was instrumental in helping to grow one of the first and most successful cloud application businesses, later acquired by SAP. Before joining Concur, he was an equity research analyst at Adams Harkness, Credit Suisse First Boston Technology Group, and Montgomery & Co., where he was also Director of Research.

Qualtrics is continuing to experience dramatic growth and international expansion. In the past three years, the 15-year-old private company has opened nine additional offices in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia.


Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. announced two new leadership appointments in the ASEAN team:

Joe Ong
Joe Ong has been promoted to Vice President & General Manager, Hitachi Data Systems, ASEAN
. In his new role, Joe will be spearheading the overall ASEAN business portfolio. As the Managing Director for Singapore and Vietnam, Joe has led the local teams for the last 5 years to grow their business by more than 100 percent.


tanTan Chang Huong has been appointed Managing Director, Hitachi Data Systems, Singapore. He will be responsible for implementing and driving Hitachi Data Systems’ transformation and for growing market share within its core business while also delivering on the company’s long-term goals for Social Innovation. Prior to his new role, Chang Huong was the District Director who led the Public Sector team, driving strong growth in HDS’ defence and homeland security business.



PROiPROI Worldwide has appointed new Vice-Chairs in its APAC, Americas and EMEA regions, who join gender diverse Board of world’s largest partnership in the communications industry. The announcement was made by Richard Tsang, Global Chairman, PROI Worldwide, at the company’s recent annual meeting held in Sydney, Australia.

Founded in Europe in 1970, PROI Worldwide is the world’s largest partnership of integrated independent communications agencies both by revenue and reach through more than 125 offices in 50+ countries. With 74 agencies across five continents, PROI Worldwide is the 6th largest communications partnership in the world with more than 5,000 staff servicing 6,300+ clients worldwide and 2016 net fee income of US$ 700+ million.

Lisa Ross, President and Partner of PROI Worldwide Agency rbb Communications based in Miami, Florida, was appointed Vice-Chair in the Americas Region, Lena Soh-Ng, Senior Partner of PROI Agency Huntington Communications in Singapore, was appointed Vice-Chair in the APAC Region and Henning Sverdrup, Partner of PROI Agency Släger Kommunikasjon in Norway, was re-appointed Vice-Chair of the EMEA Region.

lisaLisa Ross, appointed Vice-Chair, Americas Region, has a career that spans 25 years developing breakout brands. She leads rbb’s Travel and Digital Marketing Practices and oversees business development. She has provided strategic communications counsel to numerous hospitality, consumer and health-related companies over the years including the America Council on Exercise, AMResorts, Cleveland Clinic, Hilton, Virgin Voyages and Zumba Fitness. Earlier this year, Lisa was named one of the Top 25 Minds in Hospitality Sales & Marketing and is recognized in Who’s Who in Communications; Enterprising Women’s Top 100 Female Executives and the Business Journal’s Most Influential Business Women. She is a member of Women’s President Organization, and serves on the board of the Strategic Forum and HSMAI’s Marketing Advisory Committee.

lenaLena Soh-Ng, appointed Vice-Chair, APAC Region, has over 25 years of PR and media experience. As co-founder of Huntington Communications in Singapore, she has counselled industry giants including 3M, AkzoNobel, IKEA and Watsons. She’s a Past President of the Institute of Public Relations Singapore (IPRS) and has been recognized by the industry with a Lifetime Achievement Award this year. Lena is currently a member of the IPRS Accreditation Council. She also sits on the judging panel of PR Week’s Asia Awards. Lena contributes to the not-for-profit sector as a Board Member advising the Centre for Fathering Singapore on Communications Strategy.

henningHenning Sverdrup, appointed Vice-Chair, EMEA Region, is one of the founders of creative and award winning Norwegian PR agency – Släger. He has spearheaded Nordic PR-networks for large international clients such as Netflix, Sony, and Bosch & Siemens, and provided strategic and conceptual counsel for brands such as Google, BMW, The Norwegian Cancer Society, Novartis, Sanofi-Genzyme, The Norwegian Refugee Council to name a few. He is an educated officer from the Norwegian Armed Forces, holds a MSc in Marketing as well as roles on local boards. Henning and Släger have won The Sabre Award, European Excellence Awards, Cresta, STELLA and Gulltaggen.


KPMG International and Microsoft announced two important strategic initiatives that will expand the scope of their global alliance: providing clients with a portfolio of digital solutions and enabling KPMG's smart audit platform ‘KPMG Clara’, both built on KPMG business experience and the Microsoft intelligent cloud.

 

The two organizations are establishing a global Digital Solution Hub, which will leverage Microsoft Azure intelligent cloud services and artificial intelligence (AI) technology with KPMG business experience to help companies transform all areas of their businesses, including finance, operations and the customer experience. KPMG and Microsoft also announced plans to place the new KPMG smart audit platform, known as KPMG Clara, on Microsoft Azure, which will make KPMG the first of the Big Four professional services firms to enable its member firms to conduct external financial statement audits utilizing Azure, a comprehensive, cloud-based platform. Deployment across the KPMG network will depend on, among other things, applicable country regulations and any applicable engagement terms with companies audited by KPMG member firms. KPMG currently has 73,000 audit professionals worldwide and provides audit services for 23 percent of global Fortune 500 companies.

By applying Microsoft intelligent cloud capabilities such as Azure Machine Learning and Power BI (Business Intelligence) analytics to the full breadth of a client's data, KPMG Clara can help bring more automation to the audit, reducing the burden on clients around data preparation and delivery. KPMG is committed to protecting client data, and this will only intensify with moving into cloud technology.

The Digital Solution Hub marks the most significant step forward for the KPMG and Microsoft strategic alliance formed in early 2015, as it will manage ideation, architecture and development of ready-made, Microsoft Cloud-based solutions, empowering the C-suite to drive digital transformation in strategic areas of their business.

The Hub will soon launch a portfolio of CFO solutions, and Procurement 365 Digital, a data and analytics-driven solution that aims to set a new standard for digital strategic procurement. New solutions from the Hub intend to center on artificial intelligence, machine learning and analytics to help non-audit clients' businesses improve performance, profitability and growth in the disruptive global economy. Operating as a geographically distributed facility, the Digital Solution Hub will have locations in the Seattle area, at the KPMG Lighthouse -- Center of Excellence for Data & Analytics location in Berlin, and other yet-to-be-named satellite locations around the world. The Hub will be staffed by data scientists, developers, analysts, designers and other specialists from both organizations. KPMG and Microsoft plan to begin operations by the fourth quarter of 2017.



Ammar AlammarQualtrics has appointed Ammar Alammar as Head of Client Success and Implementation across Asia Pacific and Japan. His role will be to accelerate customers’ ability to implement successful experience management programs and maximize their return on investment.

Ammar Alammar held most recently the role of Senior Practice Director, Solution Delivery, at Salesforce.com. Prior to that he was the Technology Manager and lead architect at HealthShare NSW, a government agency. In that role, he led the technology team that delivered the largest ERP solution in the southern hemisphere. He started his career at Telstra, where he was one of the five engineers who designed the first Australian broadband network, which saw millions receive their first ADSL connection.


Havas Media Malaysia appointed Premnath Unnikrishnan as Head of Digital Performance and Investment.

Prem joins the agency with a rich digital experience covering tech, strategic planning, buying and account management with a proven track record of building brands digitally and executing successful marketing campaigns.

In his new role, Prem will be responsible for all aspects of the agency’s digital operation, including strategic digital leadership, digital capabilities expansion and adoption of world-class practices in the Malaysian market.

Prem joins the agency from Lyca Digital, part of the UK-based Lyca Group where he was heading Digital marketing and was responsible for Digital Marketing for LycaMobile across all the 25 markets.

Prior to Lyca, Prem has worked with MEC, where he was heading digital business for South India and handled clients like Accenture, Flipkart, and Britannia. He has also worked with Interactive Avenues in India where he managed multiple blue-chip brands including Amazon, Wipro, ITC Foods and AOL.