Adrien de Wolkoff, EDHEC International BBA 2006, a Digital Growth expert in Singapore

Adrien De Wolkoff, EDHEC International BBA 2006, lives in Asia since years and gives us advices and reasons to working there. 

Adrien has 12 years of experience in Digital Marketing (4 years in EMEA, 8 years in APAC). He has worked for both Startups ($2B valued Deliveroo & German start-up incubator Rocket Internet) and MNCs (LinkedIn, Japanese giant Rakuten, Google & Yahoo!). He is an expert in Digital Growth (Leveraging Google, Facebook and other ad networks to drive conversions or brand awareness). He currently works for LinkedIn in Singapore, heading all the Paid Digital Marketing programs for the APAC region.

The Tech industry in Asia / APAC is fascinating but vastly complex and nothing like Europe / EMEA which is much more consolidated. First of all there is China, that incredible giant, which drives 70% of all e-commerce in the region and lives in its own universe (No Google / Facebook / Amazon there). Have you heard of the Singles' Day? It's 31B$ generated in 1 day. Second, APAC is highly fragmented: From Singapore, where everyone is an Internet user and have credit cards to Myanmar which is still a developing country with poor infrastructure and no e-payments available. Thirdly, smartphone penetration / leverage is much more advanced in the developed Asian countries (China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore) where they use their phone for mostly anything from everyday banking to paying their bills by using their phone as a credit card.

If you want to embrace a career in Asia, I would recommend to get a job in Singapore or Hong Kong as these two city-states are cosmopolitan, English speaking, very dynamic and offer a lot of jobs. Forget about the GAFA, I would encourage starting your career in a local startup (Grab, Lazada or Shopback) to get a full local / regional exposure and be able to get more strategic quickly.