Inside Asia Podcast

Asia’s Balancing Act (w/ Frank Lavin)

My guest this episode is Frank Lavin, former Citibank executive, US Ambassador to Singapore, and the Founder and Chairman of ExportNow, a business designed to deliver US-brand products to China. 

Frank and I spoke at the outset of the pandemic. Since then, things have grown worse. Markets are volatile, trade is disrupted, and cities the world over are in varying stages of lockdown. Our conversation is an attempt to pull back momentarily in order to reflect on some of the broader trends that inform Asia’s prospects in the medium- to long-term.

How long the crises will continue is anyone’s guess. But make no mistake, the world will be forever changed because of it. Without becoming Covid-19 centric, we hope – in coming episodes - to touch on the virus’ impact. How will a post-Covid world re-balance global power? What’s the anticipated impact on consumer behavior? Will corporations find in this moment an opportunity to change its practices and adapt to a new set of rules? I hope you'll join us.

If you haven't already, please subscribe to Inside Asia wherever you download and manage your podcasts. Or visit us at www.insideasiapodcast.com.

Angel Warrior (w/ Prabha Dwabha)

My guest this episode is Dr. Prabhavati Dwabha, the passion and vision behind Ramana’s Garden, which for the past 20 years has offered refuge for abused and abandoned children from all parts of India. Most know her as just Prabha, She’s American by birth but India has served as her adopted home for almost 40 years, and what she’s been able to achieve here over the course of four decades is something quite astounding.

Prabha has succeeded where countless others would have thrown in the towel. What makes here different? Well, for one, she’s tenacious. Pitbull tenacious. Her life is defined by a determination to persevere against all odds. Ramana’s Garden is testimony to that fact. Where others flounder, Prabha just gets it done.

Covid-19 and the Rural Health Gap (w/ Edward Booty )

My guest this week is Edward Booty, Founder and CEO of Asia-based reach52, a company established three years ago to provide health screening and distribution services for remote communities in Asia using digital apps and mobile communications.

First, fair warning: This week’s episode is less than cheery. It’s a cautionary note for what may lay in store for the world’s poor and under-resourced.

While relatively wealthy nations reel from the sudden onset of Covid-19 and all attempts to contain the outbreak, billions of others - 52% of the world population in fact - resides in rural enclaves awaiting a pandemic that could kill in droves.

To understand what’s at stake, we need to look at the numbers. From Southeast Asia, to Africa, and many parts of South America, healthcare infrastructure, including the most basic primary care services are woefully in short supply. According to the World Bank, average per capita healthcare spend for the poorest 30 countries is just $33. Quality care is a dream. Hospitals are a luxury.

So it is that while urban dwellers take cover, scramble to self-isolate, and practice the art of social distancing, the world’s rural poor look on, wondering if and how they’ll survive when Covid-19 comes calling.

The Medicine of Consciousness (w/ Dr. Bruce Lipton)

What are you doing – you alone – to safeguard your personal health and well-being? It’s a question that keeps popping up for me.

Ultimately, who’s responsible for healthcare? Governments? Doctors? Pharmaceutical companies, perhaps? How about hospitals?

This week’s guest, Dr. Bruce Lipton, offers some insight. His 2005 book, Biology of Belief unleashed a flurry of new questions and critique around the role of conventional science and the attempt by the pharmaceutical industry to kidnap and control the health destiny of each and every individual. Big stuff!

Bruce is no stranger to controversy. In the fifteen years since his book’s publication he’s pursued his science and unraveled the mysteries of the human body, the behavior of the human cell, and the nature-born ability of each of us to manage our health by adjusting to the conditions of our respective environments.

This is a conversation in three parts. First, Lipton explains the function of the cell the way Dylan puts words to music. In part two of the discussion, we talk about the pharmaceutical sectors attempt to create much of what the body already does naturally. And finally, I ask him to envision a healthcare system less dependent on pharmaceuticals and more dependent on self-awareness and consciousness.

Sound radical? Well, it’s not. It’s science.

 

Risky Business (w/ Dane Chamorro)

This week I’m in conversation with Dane Chamorro, senior partner at Control Risks. The firms charter is to help organizations succeed in a volatile world, and nothing has created volatility more than the Coronavirus.

Some of our listeners might recall the conversation I had with Ben Rolfe, in November last year. In the first half of our discussion, we celebrated his organization’s efforts to combat and largely eradicate malaria in the region. But we also discussed the inevitable rise of other infectious and contagious diseases. It’s a spooky harbinger of the dawning of Covid-19.

We spoke again in February. This time from an isolation chamber at the Singapore Center for Infectious Diseases. Ben reached out while in confinement telling me how he had returned from a trip to Thailand, and not feeling well, presented himself to the authorities. From his hospital bed, he shares with us his front-line experience and the Singapore response to the outbreak. A week later, he was released. Hundreds of others haven’t been so lucky.

That was a month ago. Since then Coronavirus has run rampant and just days ago, the World Health Organization declared the virus a global pandemic. As other news services generate updates on the spread of the disease, government response, and ways to prevent and protect one’s self, we plan to offer our listeners a number of unique perspectives on the broader implications of the pandemic.

I kick off this episode’s conversation by asking Dane to characterize “risk” as it related to corporate and government decision-making.

Cashing Out (w/ Cary Horenfeldt)

My guest this week is Cary Horenfeldt, a self-styled digital payments expert. He’s an advisor to Bain & Company and consultant to an ever-growing FinTech community in Asia and beyond.

Based in Singapore, Cary sees growing enthusiasm for digital payments. Regulators are relaxing rules, making way for new entrants, while merchants contemplate ways to drive sales across new payment platforms. The only real loser in this payments frenzy is cash, and no one seems too sad to see it go.

So-called digital wallets are all the rage, accounting for 54% of all China e-commerce sales, which in turn, represent 620.5 billion dollars of a booming 1.2 trillion dollar marketplace. “Super Apps” created and supported by Chinese behemoths Alibaba and WeChat capture QR codes with the swipe of a smartphone, making payments quick, smooth and seamless.

In less than 20 years, China has risen to become the world’s digital vanguard. It now leads the world in digital payments, and with only 56% smartphone penetration there’s still lots of upside.

Going Viral (w/ Ben Rolfe)

On Saturday, February 8, deaths attributed to the Coronavirus surpassed those from the SARS outbreak in 2002-2003. It’s the speed of the spread of this particular disease that’s cause for concern.

Data shows that it took just 20 days, compared to 80 for SARS, to result in 800 deaths. But data can be misleading. Because the infectious footprint of the Coronavirus is so much larger than SARS with the Chinese city of Wuhan at the epicenter, it feels precarious.

Against this backdrop, I received a message from Ben Rolfe. He was texting from an isolation room in Singapore’s National Center for Infectious Diseases, suspected of contracting the Coronavirus.

Ben is one of a handful of experts in the region who track and tackle infectious disease. Regular listeners may recall our conversation last November. In that episode, entitled “Asian Contagion,” Ben celebrated the dramatic reduction in malaria across the region, but raised concerns about other forms of infectious disease provoked in part by rapid urbanization, limited healthcare budgets, and poor planning.

Finding himself on the front-line of an epidemic, surrounded by healthcare workers in biohazard suits has given Ben a rare, albeit unwanted, perspective, and the conversation that follows is a warning to us all.

China 2020 Foresight (w/ Jim McGregor)

This week, we’re back with a program favorite, Jim McGregor. For Jim, China has been a stomping ground for more than 30 years and he brings to our conversations the thing we appreciate the most – perspective.

To truly understand China is to witness the country through the long arc of history. It’s as consistent as it is surprising. In certain instances, it takes a crisis to reveal the underbelly of a nation steeped in secrecy. This time, the crisis came in the form of the corona virus, striking at the heart of China’s Hubei Province, and resulting in the lockdown of Wuhan, one of the country’s most essential industrial centers.

The number of infected has skyrocketed to more than 20,000 people in less than two weeks. Wuhan remains the epicenter of the outbreak, but cases are spreading throughout China and the world, with more than 25 countries reporting confirmed cases.

The economic impact on China, and the rest of the world for that matter, has also raised concerns. Because of an over weighted dependency on China for manufactured goods, any slowdown on the Mainland will most assuredly have an impact on the global economy. Economists say China’s growth could slip from 6.1 to 5.6% in 2020 because of the outbreak, and by extension, trimming 0.2% off global economic growth. Not an attractive prospect when staring down the barrel of a possible Recession later this year, or early next.

Building a Better Boardroom (w/ Elisa Mallis)

This week I’m in conversation with Elisa Mallis, Vice President and Managing Director at the Center for Creative Leadership. She’s talking about Corporate Boards in Asia and how the time has come to re-evaluate the role of the Board member in order to establish a new kind of leadership culture.

The Center, better known by its acronym, CCL, has made its mark as one of the world’s preeminent leadership training and development firms. For decades, CCL has researched global leadership trends then tailored programs to equip executives in the art of change and adaptation. Elisa her colleagues have recently completed a year-long study covering six key markets spanning South and Southeast Asia. The results suggest that Asia’s Boards – by their own admission – are way behind where they need to be in order to lead their organizations through complex times.

The world is faced with bold new challenges and what’s needed is a bold new response. So, say hello to the Board. While CEOs and their operating teams focus on day-to-day challenges associated with running the company, targeting earnings and managing costs, Board members are being called upon to step up, assume greater responsibility, help set the organizational agenda, and fill its ranks with domain experts and technical specialists.

Food Inc. (w/ Sasha Conlan)

This week I’m in conversation with Sasha Conlan, Founder and Owner of Singapore-based Sasha’s Fine Foods. We’re back in Singapore, and it’s that funny time of year where we find ourselves sandwiched between the Christmas season on the one end and Chinese New Year on the other.

Over the course of my thirty years in Asia, I’ve come to appreciate this 4-5 week “in-between” period as a time to reflect all that has occurred and all that has yet to come. More often than not, food is involved. Whether we’re talking stuffed turkey or pork dumplings, the holidays mean food and lots of it for weeks on end.  

My mid-riff is the only evidence on hand, but here’s the point: Whether American or Chinese, French or Indonesian, we all imbibe in the culture of food.

Increasingly, however, the source of our favorite foods are less known to us. For most, plucking vegetables from the home garden or slaughtering the fatted calf are chores reminiscent of a by-gone era. Grocery stores are the modern-day go-to. The source of most of our nutrition needs. But what exactly does that mean? Or more importantly, what, if anything, are we giving up by relying on middlemen and retailers to source the food we rely on?

Sasha says rising consciousness, growing concerns around processed foods, and a simple, healthy desire for farm-fresh products are creating new opportunities for small business owners that can deliver.