Episode 26 – Angeline Tham – CEO, Angkas – Set an Objective, Aim High

Angeline Tham was born and raised in Singapore…and did her university studies at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University.

Going to school in New York was very different than growing up in Singapore and opened her eyes to a lot of things…noting that if she had not gone overseas, she may not have joined the startup world at all.

After graduation, she joined J.P. Morgan. It was a great experience but lacked some fulfillment, particularly as some of her clients were building and running their own businesses. After a decent stint at J. P. Morgan, she left banking to start a company with one of her closest friends, Qiuyan Tian.

Leaving banking was never going to be easy, but venturing out with a her close friend, someone she trusted completely made the transition that much easier.

Angeline moved to the Philippines and took a role with Softbank that gave her a good introduction to the venture capital side of the business…helping them look for investments in Indonesia and the Philippines.

Later she join Grab via her work at Softbank and started the ‘two wheel’ business’ for them in the Philippines, including transportation and delivery.

All of this prepared Angeline to start her own business again.  Angkas, which is a local word for pillion riding, is both a transportation and delivery business on motorbikes.  The Angkas app has been downloaded over 1MM times and the company has on-boarded 20,000 biker partners.