CENTO - Key Persons
Boon Ping is a Senior Advisor at Cento, leading its investment strategy and deal origination efforts, in addition to serving as a member Cento's investment committee. He has over 20 years of extensive experience in venture capital and M&A in the technology, media and telecommunications sectors.
Prior to Cento, he was the CEO of Straits Capital Investment Pte Ltd ("Straits Capital"). Straits Capital is the corporate venture fund of SPH (Singapore Press Holdings), one of the largest media groups in South East Asia. In that role, he managed a corporate venture fund totalling in excess of U$70 million that he invested with a global multi-stage mandate into technology companies.
Prior to that, Boon Ping served as Senior Vice President of EDBi, the investment subsidiary of EDB (Economic Development Board of Singapore), the government agency leading innovation and economic initiatives for the Republic of Singapore. He was responsible for leading its Technology investment team.
Boon Ping is a Singaporean and holds a Bachelor of Engineering (with Honours) and a Master in Business Administration (Banking & Finance) from Nanyang Technological University. He passed CFA Level 3 exam in 2001.
As the fund CFO, Lee is responsible for building and maintaining each of Cento Ventures' funds, as well as overseeing all investment activity and compliance issues. Given his experience in supporting fast-growing tech companies as an operational CFO, he often gets involved in supporting the portfolio directly.
Before Cento, Lee held a number of senior operational finance positions within the TMT sector, most recently as CFO for Touch Local Group in the UK. Backed by Balderton Capital, the company was recognised by The Sunday Times Tech Track Top 100 as one of the fastest growing private technology companies in Britain and was acquired by Web.com (NASDAQ: WWWW).
During his four-year tenure at Touch Local, Lee was responsible for commercial financial analysis and decision support, driving the Group to profitability. He also oversaw the implementation of successful and scalable financial systems and processes. Lee was the key finance partner on a number of transactions including the acquisition and subsequent integration of Enable Media (Scoot.com) from ITV Plc in 2009.
In previous roles, Lee headed up the Financial Planning & Analysis function for Advertising Sales at Yahoo! Europe and also spent four years with the Financial Times, where he was involved in a number of key strategic online projects.
Rene is our presence on the ground In Malaysia. As an entrepreneur himself, and with his extensive experience in Malaysia's digital scene, he is a great help in keeping us closely informed on startups and investment trends in the country.
Rene has been starting and investing in businesses since 1997. He currently sits on the board of a diverse portfolio of companies, some of which he co-founded covering Advertising Tech, F&B and Manufacturing. His investment portfolio includes startups in logistics, affiliate marketing, fin-tech and social applications. These leverage his strong regional network and reputation.
In his most recent role, he was CEO of CtrlShift, the largest independent Ad Tech company in Asia, managing the P&L and over 150 employees in a business that spread across Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines. This included driving the merger of three companies operationally and culturally.
The first business he co-founded was a soft-landing partner to the largest digital media companies around the world by giving them a low-risk model to enter these emerging markets. Yahoo!, MSN, Facebook, Waze, Spotify, BBC, ESPN, Disney and countless more relied exclusively on his company to generate advertising revenues, build the foundation for market entry and establish and maintain a brand identity during their contract tenure.
He also assisted GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and British American Tobacco navigate the digital world for the first time in the region during the infant years of the Internet and jointly built the first Ad Network in Malaysia.
Rene was instrumental in the formation of the Malaysian Digital Association (the apex industry body for Malaysia) where he was President for 2 terms.
He recently acquired a stake in an F&B business and two frozen food manufacturing companies and intends to use these as vehicles to revolutionize the US$1 trillion premium halal foods industry globally.
With his breadth and depth of experience around the new economy, he is interested in working with fast-growth companies regardless of size and doesn't shy away from rolling up his sleeves and getting shit done.