Kim Y

Straits Signal

Business EN ↓ 3 episodes

Southeast Asia lacks honest signal. Straits Signal is a long-form conversation platform built around the systems shaping the region: mobility, capital, infrastructure, and the energy transition. Each episode is a single extended dialogue with someone navigating a structural shift in real time: the operator absorbing the friction, the investor pricing the risk, the builder sequencing the impossible. The format is deliberate. One guest. One thread. No panel, no pivot. What emerges is how Southeast Asia actually works, the version with the capital gap, the regulatory constraint, the human resista...

Author

Kim Y

Episodes

THE SOUL TEST: Rachel Freeman on Building A Profitable Digital Bank Across Three Continents 04.06.2026 46:17

Runtime: ~46 min 650 digital banks exist in the world. Only 92 are profitable. Rachel Freeman runs one of them. In this episode of Straits Signal, Kim Yeoh sits down with Rachel Freeman of Tyme Group, the digital bank serving 22 million customers across the Philippines and South Africa, profitable from close to day one. Rachel has spent her career building financial infrastructure across four cont...

The Patience Tax: Building a RM111M Solar Company When Everything Keeps Changing | Zeth Lim 14.05.2026 36:55

Most people will look at @Verdant Solar's listing and see the highlight reel. 39.6 times oversubscribed. 19% debut jump. Malaysia Book of Records. RM111 million in revenue. That's the ending. This conversation is about the price of getting there. Zeth Lim founded Verdant Solar in 2013. He didn't hire a single person for five years. He chose residential rooftops — one customer at a time — in an ind...

The Fear Premium:The Hidden Friction Behind Singapore’s Commercial EV Transition 09.04.2026 57:02

STRAITS SIGNAL | EP 01 The Fear Premium:The hidden friction behind Singapore’s commercial EV transition Most people know Hong Seh for Ferrari. For Maserati. For the kind of cars that made Singaporeans crane their necks on the PIE. That chapter's closed. And what Edward Tan — third-generation, true-blue Singaporean — is building in its place is arguably more interesting. Less glamorous, maybe. But...