BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)

Wing Vasiksiri joins Jeremy Au to analyze a major wave of tech M&A deals and macro growth trends reshaping Southeast Asia. They dissect Grab’s $1.5 billion acquisition of a 60% stake in Atome Financial, examining its unique performance-linked staged structure, offline-to-online retail synergies against Sea Group, and the strategic value of Atome’s credit underwriting capabilities. They also break down Circle’s $400 million purchase of Tazapay, exploring how cross-border B2B payment rails and all-stock deal structures de-risk regional expansion and align long-term founder incentives. Finally, they examine Singapore’s $200M+ fintech fund injection, the double-digit surge in regional e-commerce activity, and why Thailand and Malaysia are emerging as primary data center hubs for Chinese hyperscalers and frontier AI initiatives.

00:00 SEA tech M&A takes off: Grab announces a $1.5B deal for Atome Financial while Circle acquires B2B payments firm Tazapay for $400M. 

03:14 Grab and Atome synergies: Combining offline BNPL retail networks with food delivery to build an orthogonal vector against Sea Group. 

04:38 Unique deal structures in regional tech: How staged buyouts and performance-linked mechanisms de-risk acquirers and align management teams. 

06:36 Underwriting as a competitive moat: Grab taps into Atome's multi-country credit track record, institutional debt lines, and portfolio scale. 

11:08 Strategic cash deployment: Grab utilizes balance sheet cash for high-growth strategic acquisitions rather than traditional public market buybacks. 

12:51 Circle acquires Tazapay: Cross-border regulatory licenses and global payment infrastructure unlock a 6x payout for early VC backers. 

18:02 Singapore’s $200M+ fintech initiative: Public funding steps in during a VC deployment winter to support proven regional exit pathways. 

19:50 E-commerce surge across SEA: Double-digit growth in app installs in Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia creates secondary startup opportunities.

26:02 Frontier AI labs expand to APAC: OpenAI and neolabs establish Singapore headquarters and launch accelerator programs in Thailand. 

27:18 The Thailand and Malaysia data center boom: Abundant power, cheap land, and a "bring-your-own-chip" model drive Chinese hyperscaler investments.

Ajay Bulusu sold NextBillion.ai after a two-year process, and his verdict on cross-border M&A is blunt: 99% of attempts fail, and the founders who never sell are usually stopped by greed rather than by the market. He tells Jeremy Au why 2021 SaaS valuations stopped being fundable the moment ChatGPT arrived, why he picked a number before he started and walked the day he hit it, and why age not coming back mattered more than the last dollar. Then he explains why he started again immediately. After losing his father to a side effect of his cancer treatment, and his mother to a stage four diagnosis a colonoscopy would have caught, he spent eighteen months on his own money building what became 150, a precision health company that reads epigenetics, gut and blood to tell you how each of your organs is ageing.

Ajay Bulusu is a technologist, entrepreneur, and founder building at the intersection of artificial intelligence, data, and human health. He is the Co-founder of 150, a next-generation human health and longevity company building an intelligence layer for health — bringing together diagnostics, biomarkers, wearable data, nutrition, and AI to help people predict, prevent, and optimize their health over a lifetime.

Prior to 150, Ajay was the Founder and CEO of NextBillion.ai, a Singapore-based deep-tech company pioneering AI-powered mapping, spatial data, and routing infrastructure for global enterprises. The company was acquired by Velocitor Solutions in 2025. Earlier, Ajay was a founding leader of the Geo organization at Grab and held leadership roles at Google, Indeed, and American Express. Having built technology and companies across Asia, Europe, and North America, Ajay brings a global perspective to building ambitious, category-defining businesses and applying technology to some of the world's most complex problems.

Ajay’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajaybulusu 

150: https://150.fit 

Watch, listen or read the full insight at https://www.bravesea.com/blog/ajay-bulusu-150-health 

BRAVE is Southeast Asia's leading tech podcast, hosted by Jeremy Au. Honest conversations with the region's top founders, investors, and operators on building startups in Southeast Asia.

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#PreventiveHealth #FounderExit #SoutheastAsia #Singapore #India #TechPodcast #PrecisionMedicine #HealthTech #Epigenetics #PreventiveCare #Longevity #Wearables #Supplements #StartupExit #MergersAndAcquisitions #SecondTimeFounder #Founders #SoutheastAsiaTech #Malaysia #Indonesia #Philippines #Vietnam #Entrepreneurship

00:00 Introduction

01:13 From Hyderabad to Google, Grab and NextBillion.ai

03:20 Deciding to sell: the SaaS peak and ChatGPT

04:42 Why 99% of M&A fails

06:44 Losing his father, and his mother's diagnosis

09:12 Why the company is called 150

10:45 Doctor 3.0 and the WhatsApp agent

12:39 Precision medicine, not longevity

16:59 Who buys preventive health, and does insurance pay

22:38 The real barrier is the mind, not the money

28:52 Five doctors per patient, and India's specialist gap

32:15 Supplements and the anti-anxiety band

38:48 Men, women, hormones and taboos

40:48 What being brave means

Adriel Yong is the Co-Founder and COO of Clouted, the AI-native clipping and distribution company that turns long-form content into short video and routes it to the right platform and audience. Clouted has raised a $7M seed led by Slow Ventures, following a $4.45M round backed by a16z SPEEDRUN and AppWorks under its former name, Clout Kitchen. The team also produces &FRIENDS, one of the largest dance and pop-culture festivals in the Philippines. 

Adriel joined Jeremy Au to work through what AI has done to media. Five or six years ago, making this podcast meant cutting every "um" by hand and building cover art from scratch, and Adriel's estimate is that roughly 80% of that work no longer exists. What moved into the space are faceless pages and fully synthetic creators, plus a third feed inside the AI apps competing for the ten hours a day. Social was meant to be the escape from bought media and is now entirely paid, and the answer engines are going the same way: people used to shape human perception, now they shape the model's. Which leaves the question of what still competes, and Jeremy's answer is not sleep, the way Netflix once put it, but real life. They work through the evidence and the strategy underneath it, from the K-shaped cinema rebound to Costco's private-label discipline mapped onto AI marketplaces, and close on the framework that AI shortens the route to purchase for things and places, but not for people.

Watch, listen or read the full insight at https://www.bravesea.com/blog/ai-content 

BRAVE is Southeast Asia's leading tech podcast, hosted by Jeremy Au. Honest conversations with the region's top founders, investors, and operators on building startups in Southeast Asia.

New episodes every week. Subscribe so you never miss one.

Listen & Subscribe

YouTube (English), YouTube (Bahasa Indonesia), Spotify (English), Spotify (Bahasa Indonesia), Spotify (Chinese), Spotify (Vietnamese), Apple Podcasts

Follow BRAVE

LinkedIn, X (Twitter), Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp

Follow Jeremy Au

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Resources

Get transcripts, startup resources & community discussions at www.bravesea.com

#AI #Media #SoutheastAsia #Singapore #Philippines #TechPodcast #ContentCreation #CreatorEconomy #FacelessContent #AIVideo #GenerativeAI #GEO #AISEO #MediaStrategy #Startups #Founders #SEAstartups #Indonesia #Vietnam #Malaysia 

00:00 Introduction

00:55 How AI collapsed the production workflow

03:28 Faceless creators and AI-generated creators

05:16 The ChatGPT feed vs the Instagram feed

07:12 Social is now paid social, and the GEO scramble

09:25 Content's biggest competitor is real life

10:37 IRL experiences as a go-to-market motion

12:09 The K-shaped cinema economy: IMAX, the Sphere, F1

14:15 Do you need more AI tools than ChatGPT?

15:17 The atom of work AI actually replaces

16:22 Free time, the senses, and omnichannel shopping

18:33 Costco, Kirkland, and AI marketplaces

19:59 A24's barbell versus the blockbuster bet

22:19 Fandom, IP, and imaginary characters

24:27 Know the real estate you are standing on

25:39 How media consumption habits changed

27:31 Why podcasts survive: edutainment and opinion

30:14 What we consumed in the last 24 hours

32:14 The insurance arbitrage AI found

34:08 Toilets, Wirecutter, and shopping with AI

36:02 Things and places, yes. People, no.

38:55 Word of mouth is still the filter for people

40:44 The Comfort Crisis and rethinking the cinema

Jeremy Au takes the hot seat in a reverse interview hosted by Edric Poon to unpack the true value of a Harvard MBA and the fundamental principles of business leadership. Jeremy unbundles the prestigious degree into three core components: practical utility and learning, building a long-term global network, and acquiring a costly social credential. He shares actionable frameworks for effective leadership, emphasizing the necessity of decisive strategy, ruthless prioritization, and the ability to mobilize resources and capital. The conversation also explores the psychology behind the Harvard case study method, how pattern-matching helps leaders spot corporate fraud, and the harsh, irreversible realities of founder burnout. Finally, Jeremy contrasts Western and Asian leadership styles, explaining how regional GDP per capita and Wall Street’s shareholder supremacy dictate corporate culture across the globe.

Watch, listen or read the full insight at https://www.bravesea.com/blog/harvard-mba-leadership 

BRAVE is Southeast Asia's leading tech podcast, hosted by Jeremy Au. Honest conversations with the region's top founders, investors, and operators on building startups in Southeast Asia.

New episodes every week. Subscribe so you never miss one.

Listen & Subscribe

YouTube (English), YouTube (Bahasa Indonesia), Spotify (English), Spotify (Bahasa Indonesia), Spotify (Chinese), Spotify (Vietnamese), Apple Podcasts

Follow BRAVE

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Follow Jeremy Au

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#Leadership #SoutheastAsia #HarvardMBA #Singapore #TechPodcast #MBA #BusinessSchool #Management #Founders #Startups #VentureCapital #CareerAdvice #Burnout #FamilyBusiness #CorporateGovernance #AsianLeadership #SEAstartups #Malaysia #Indonesia #Philippines #Vietnam #Entrepreneurship 

0:00 500 case studies, and what they're actually for

0:52 Introduction: Jeremy in the hot seat

1:43 What a Harvard MBA is actually for

5:01 The half-million-dollar signal

6:38 How to unbundle all three yourself

9:17 Decide, prune, mobilise

10:43 Atari, Nokia, and BlackBerry's own prototype

14:24 Manager versus leader

16:15 The campfire, and who walks into the dark

21:00 Authenticity is not permission to be your worst self

22:59 The case method and the supercomputer brain

26:21 Enron, and pattern matching fraud

29:59 The mistake Jeremy made twice

35:27 Two bad nights of sleep is two drinks

37:34 So what is Asian leadership?

39:12 GDP per capita, and where trust lives

44:49 Wall Street versus everybody else

50:52 Community over the individual

54:08 The MBA in your pocket

Jianggan Li returns for a China read: Europe's run on Chinese air conditioners, the humanoid robot games, Shein's discounted Hong Kong listing, and what breaks when Chinese firms go abroad. One thread runs through all four. China's advantage is not invention. Midea did not build a better aircon, it read Europe's building codes and engineered to them. Robot hardware raced ahead because engineers ground at it for a year while the software did not. Temu went from someone suggesting a Super Bowl ad to the ad being made in thirty days. The moat is iteration, and Chinese firms are mostly competing with each other, not with you. Also: why the robots still need a human holding a remote, why humanoids substitute for cheap labour instead of complementing it, and the advice one operator gives about expanding abroad, which is to stop trying to change how things are done there and change yourself instead. 

Watch, listen or read the full insight at https://www.bravesea.com/blog/china-competitive-advantage 

BRAVE is Southeast Asia's leading tech podcast, hosted by Jeremy Au. Honest conversations with the region's top founders, investors, and operators on building startups in Southeast Asia.

New episodes every week. Subscribe so you never miss one.

Listen & Subscribe

YouTube (English), YouTube (Bahasa Indonesia), Spotify (English), Spotify (Bahasa Indonesia), Spotify (Chinese), Spotify (Vietnamese), Apple Podcasts

Follow BRAVE

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Follow Jeremy Au

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Get transcripts, startup resources & community discussions at www.bravesea.com

#China #HumanoidRobots #SoutheastAsia #China #HumanoidRobots #SoutheastAsia #Shein #Temu #Unitree #Midea #Robotics #Ecommerce #Manufacturing #Singapore #Startups #SEAstartups

00:00 Introduction

01:45 Europe's aircon panic, and the 12-hour drive

03:08 Designed to the regulation, not to be better

05:07 It's not China vs you. It's China vs China.

05:55 The World Humanoid Robot Games

06:52 Why the robots still need a human with a remote

08:20 Hardware outpaced software, and the data problem

11:19 Unitree's IPO, and a founder who wasn't smiling

11:53 Humanoid robots vs cheap human labour

15:02 Complement or substitute: where humanoids land first

16:43 Shein: $100B to $26B

19:25 Temu, de minimis, and the marketplace squeeze

20:43 The Super Bowl ad built in 30 days

23:12 Nobody writes the story of iterative engineering

25:41 Going global, and the driving seat problem

28:49 What to watch: the Xi-Trump meeting