Asia Tech Lens - The Podcast

We hit publish in October this year with a simple goal: have honest, operator-level conversations with founders building real businesses across Asia. Today’s episode is a rewind of the moments that stayed with us: building through pivots, the realities of raising money, hard decisions, and what it takes to scale across markets and time zones. Expect standout takeaways on AI learning and product va...

In this episode, we sit down with Rob Schimek , Group CEO of bolttech , to unpack one of Asia’s most ambitious insurtech scale-up stories—and why the world’s protection gap is now a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity hiding in plain sight. Rob has spent decades at the intersection of finance, risk, and technology. From leading a major global insurer to building one of the fastest-growing embedded-i...

In this episode, we sit down with serial entrepreneur Eric Barbier, who lives by a simple rule: “Where there is a problem, there is a business.”Eric has lived several chapters of the fintech story. He built a mobile-messaging startup, enabled international prepaid top-ups, and supported mobile-wallet remittances across regions from Southeast Asia to Africa. Throughout those chapters, the same oper...

This week on Asia Tech Lens, we unpack one of Southeast Asia’s most instructive fintech stories: how Kelvin Teo built Funding Societies | Modalku into the region’s largest SME digital lender — and the painful lessons most founders only learn the hard way. The spark was unexpected. During his time at Harvard Business School, Kelvin heard Peter Thiel argue that Asia didn’t need “more innovation,” it...

In this episode of Asia Tech Lens: Founder Stories , we sit down with Guo Jun , Co-Founder of Superhexa — a Beijing-based startup taking one of the boldest approaches in China’s AI hardware boom. Superhexa is betting on an idea most of the industry got wrong. More than 100 Chinese companies have rushed to launch AI glasses in the past 18 months — but most of those devices are too heavy, too hot, h...

In this episode of Asia Tech Lens: Founder Stories , we sit down with Neo Zhizhong , Co-Founder and CEO of Geniebook — a Singapore-based edtech company using human + AI to personalize how children learn at scale. Geniebook didn’t start as a tech platform. It began as a small tuition centre , teaching students face-to-face. But Neo and his team noticed a pattern: every student learned differently,...

In this episode of Asia Tech Lens: Founder Stories , we sit down with Kevin Choi , Co-Founder and CEO of Mediwhale — a Korean healthtech startup using AI to see what doctors can’t. At just 26, Kevin lost half his vision to glaucoma — a silent, asymptomatic disease. Instead of retreating, he turned that diagnosis into a mission: to build an AI system that could prevent others from going through the...

In this episode, Dr. Joleen Liang , Co-Founder of Squirrel Ai and CEO of SAI North America, shares how the Shanghai-based edtech went from near-collapse to a global relaunch. From losing almost all revenue to paying off every dollar of debt within two years, hers is a story of persistence, community, and the power of adaptive AI to keep learning alive. Hosted by Miro Lu , this conversation dives d...

Miro Lu sits down with David Isaac Mathews (Founder, AIPath.one) to unpack how an AI-native strategy engine models customers and competitors using a digital-twin approach, runs large-scale strategy simulations to pre-test ideas, and helps teams avoid shipping “busywork.” Check Out The Best Parts: 06:11 - Good Ideas don’t pay the bills 20:43 - AI isn’t overhyped 24:19 - How trust in tech evolves 26...

Miro Lu kicks off our debut episode with Aaron Tan , Co-Founder & CEO of Carro . Check Out The Best Parts * 30:30 - Business has no business in politics * 43:13 - His take on the grind culture * 56:45 - What’s next after Carro Brought to you by: Perspective Media Studios - From broadcast to branded storytelling across Asia. Asia Tech Lens - Independent insights at the intersection of tech, policy...

We all know the bigwigs from Silicon Valley. But how many Asian tech players can you name? That’s why we started Asia Tech Lens — to bring you closer to the people behind the tech, and the force behind their every decision. From used cars to edtech to AI, host Miro Lu sits down with the founders and operators driving Asia’s next wave of innovation. No gloss. Real operators. Bold decisions. How do...