The Future is Now: Ilaria Chan of Grab on Changing The World Through Technology 

Tech investments have been steadily gaining momentum over the past decades. This trend, coupled with ever-growing empirical evidence that technological advancements can help solve some of the world’s most critical challenges, has created a fertile ground for policy makers and wealth owners alike to focus on impactful and mission-driven opportunities. 

 

Ilaria Chan, Chairperson of the Tech For Good Institute(a think tank founded by Southeast Asia’s superapp Grab) and Group Advisor of Grab, is at the forefront of the sector’s growth.

Chan, who’s also a global keynote speaker, private investor, and serves on the Board of Trustees of humanitarian organisations like Care For Children, focuses, among other things, on utilising the ever-reaching powers brought by the digital economy in Southeast Asia as a catalyst for sustainable social change.

We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Chan in Singapore to discuss her multifaceted experience, her humanitarian commitments and the importance of ethical and purpose-driven investments.

Tell us about your background. 


My career started with Goldman Sachs in New York, where I was focusing on Asia equities, mainly helping the region's companies go public in the US. And after that, I spent a few years in the humanitarian space and also went to culinary school. Afterwards, I invested for a private Family Office and eventually moved to Singapore to join Grab as a corporate finance executive during the period when we did our Series H pre-IPO fundraise. Later on, I moved on to be an advisor on the public affairs side and eventually became the co-founding Chairperson of the Tech for Good Institute. 

Outside of Grab, I am involved with different organisations supporting tech and women empowerment. While my work mostly focuses on Asia, I'm based in San Francisco, with a mission to connect east and west.

Can you tell us a bit about the Tech for Good Institute? 

The Tech for Good Institute was founded a year and a half ago by Grab. We were founded as a thought leadership platform to bring together the public and private sectors in Southeast Asia with a mission to help everyone harness tech for good. In many ways, tech is an inevitable sector now that penetrates every other industry. We want to engage all stakeholders: policy holders, founders and gig economy workers. We’d like everyone in the ecosystem to come together to discuss the pertinent issues, learn from each other and advance nation building efforts in this region. 

How important is it to combine ethics and long-lasting impact when investing?

I think there's only one answer to this question: it is very important! I think everybody knows that impact is key to investments, but only in recent years people have actually started to see the cost of not adhering to that thought. Negative externalities are being caused by bad investments into bad areas. We're now seeing how it's costing our current and future generations, especially in the climate area.

We're also seeing the importance of financial inclusion to help people who are unbanked to be banked and have access to loans to partake in the formal economy, which is very important in this current generation of high inflation for people to be able to have access to investment instruments. Impact can be defined in many ways. Each company has to find their own identity and a way to define it. But I would say every sector needs to find a way to invest and make sure their investments are serving society positively.

What social causes are you most attached to at the moment and why?

The one cause that I really believe in, and that actually has the highest return on investment (ROI), is helping orphans and forgotten children in developing countries. One of the humanitarian organisations that I've been involved with for more than seven years is called Care For Children. It helped orphans in China for 20 years find loving adoptive homes. We work top down with the governments in different countries to make sure that they have the right welfare, resources, and the right monitoring system to make sure that parents are treating these adopted children well. Only when children can get the proper care, recognition and sense of identity to grow into healthy individuals, can they be the future of a nation. The organisation is now present in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and we're being invited by the governments of Nepal, Indonesia, Serbia and Greece to enter their countries as well. 

That's one area that I am just so grateful to be included in as I also work with a trafficking rescue charity. Unfortunately, by the time children are being trafficked and abused it is too late. This happens because they have been neglected and because they have no safety net, hence why they're being targeted. I think that if we can preempt it by making sure every child has a loving and caring home, that's the best bet for the future of our world.