Verizon Media, a division of Verizon Communications, promoted Paul Sigaloff to Vice President of ANZ and INSEA, who now expands his remit beyond Australia and New Zealand to include the regions of India and South East Asia.

Verizon Media houses a trusted media ecosystem of premium brands like Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sport, and Yahoo Lifestyle to help people stay informed and entertained, communicate, and transact, while creating new ways for advertisers and media partners to connect. From XR experiences to advertising and content technology, Verizon Media is an incubator of innovation and intends to revolutionize the next generation of content creation in a 5G world.

Effective immediately, Sigaloff will lead Verizon Media’s teams in these regions, and the current sales team headed by Verizon Media's Senior Director Sales SEA, Carol Tay, will now report to him.

The move is recognition for Sigaloff’s leadership during a record year of growth for Verizon Media ANZ. In 2020 Monthly Active Users (MAUs) across Yahoo’s editorial brands grew 11%, with double digit revenue growth despite the headwinds in the wider market.

Sigaloff has a career spanning over 20 years across the media industry in the UK and Australia. He joined the company in 2014 as Commercial Director and became Managing Director of ANZ in 2018.

His leadership philosophy and success in ANZ is grounded on the principles of media and advertising acting as forces for good in the world. This approach has leveraged product developments including greater privacy controls for users, and internally through a phenomenal corporate social responsibility program which saw the company donate more than AU$1m in time and value to charitable causes across 2020.

SUSE, a global leader in innovative, reliable and enterprise-grade opensource solutions, announced the appointment of Vishal Ghariwala as its new Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ), and Greater China regions. He will be based in the Singapore office.

A visionary expert in the IT industry, Vishal’s appointment will underpin and strengthen SUSE’s expansion plans in these regions. He has spent half his career working in opensource companies and brings to SUSE a demonstrated track record and more than 20 years of experience in cloud computing, cloud native applications and middleware.  

As the new CTO for APJ and Greater China, Vishal will focus on executive level engagement with key customers and partners, and growing SUSE’s mindshare in the industry. Vishal’s vast technical experience will also see him support the global Office of the CTO’s objectives in identifying and driving innovative technologies and opportunities in Enterprise Linux, Kubernetes Management and Edge solutions to benefit SUSE and its customers.

Vishal joins SUSE from Red Hat where he was Director for Cloud Native Application Platforms. Before that, he also held key technical and presales roles in government and tech companies such as Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, ILOG and IBM.

The SUSE (AFIN) announced the appointment of Naveen Kumar as Director to its board, and Deep Singhania as Member to its Strategic Advisory Council. Their appointments will expand the current Board of AFIN to seven directors and three advisors.

Naveen and Deep will contribute their valuable knowledge and experience in growing the AFIN organisation, improving memberships and adapting its flagship product, API Exchange (APIX) to industry requirements. APIX is a global platform that enables financial institutions and FinTechs to discover one another on a curated global marketplace, design experiments collaboratively in a cloud-based sandbox, and deploy innovative technology solutions to solve intractable problems in the banking and financial sector efficiently and at scale.

Throughout his career, Naveen has amassed over 25 years of professional experience in the IT industry. Naveen founded the Nityo group of companies in 2006 with over two decades of experience in technology leadership. Since then, his dynamic leadership style has led Nityo into becoming one of the fastest growing Management Consulting and Technology Services companies globally. Nityo revenues are soon expected to exceed USD1 billion, with an employee strength of over 16,000 and a presence in over 25 countries worldwide. Prior to founding Nityo, Naveen also held Vice President positions in IT service and software firms Ness Technologies and Apar Infotech, gaining vital experience in leading large businesses. He has an acute sense for identifying opportunities and an ability to nurture them into successful client-centric businesses.

Deep is a Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management alumnus and has worked in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry globally in leadership positions. Deep has global rich experience of more than 20 years in the Software Services and Product industry covering all sectors and technologies. Deep has spent many years in Information Technology and Consulting firm, TCS, where he was Country Chief Executive Officer of Singapore. He has also worked with banking and financial software firm, Nucleus, where he was head of the Asia Pacific region, and then at IT service firm Emerio, as Global Strategy Head.

The content technology enterprise, SPi Global, rebrands as Straive (pronounced "strive") and announces the launch of its new avatar that provides data services, subject matter expertise (SME) and technology solutions to multiple domains such as research content, e-Learning/EdTech and data/information providers.

Following many developments in recent years including major acquisitions, new revenue streams and further consolidation of key business divisions, the new brand restates the value proposition of the company.

The rebranding exercise is an amalgamation of several strategic and gradual changes to the visual identity of the company including a new brand color, logo, refreshed website, and social channels. The name Straive encompasses the company's increased focus on AI-driven solutions and signifies the ongoing endeavor to continuously enhance the value that the company brings to its customers, employees and to the community. The new brand logo represents Straive's commitment to unravel the power of information by "Connecting the Dots''. The company also launched a new brand film and a microsite to mark the brand refresh.

APAC Effie Awards 2021 appoints Mondelez International’s Sindhuja Rai and DoubleVerify’s Takashi Takeda as Heads of Jury and reveals full jury line-up.

Both experienced Effie judges, they will lead the jury in evaluating marketing communications efforts and honoring the best-in-class works in the region.

Sindhuja Rai is Mondelez International’s Global Media Investment & AMEA CX Lead. She is responsible for maximizing opportunities in the area of global partnership and value optimization to deliver greater ROI and impact on media investments across the globe. Additionally, she continues to lead Media and Digital in AMEA and works closely with brands and markets to activate their strategic priorities across the region. Sindhuja has over 20 years of experience in media and digital gained in agencies, consulting, and client organizations. Before joining Mondelez International, she worked with global agency networks such as SMG, Mindshare, IPG Mediabrands, Madison and Havas.

As Country Manager and Representative Director at DoubleVerify Japan, Takashi Takeda is responsible for leading DoubleVerify’s expansion into Japan and introducing its sophisticated ad verification tools to the Japanese market. Takashi was previously the Director of Google Japan, where he provided video and display solutions for major advertisers and led the initiative for digital creative solutions, including data-driven ones, for advertisers and agencies. Prior to joining Google, he worked at creative agencies such as DDB and JWT for more than 25 years, serving numerous blue chip brands including VW, Nestle, P&G and Unilever.

Besides announcing the last two Heads of Jury, Effie Asia Pacific has also revealed the final group of jurors for this year’s competition. The full jury line-up has been announced at https://apaceffie.com/competition/2021-jury.

The South China Morning Post (SCMP) announced the appointment of Darryl Choo as Regional Sales Director, APAC.

Choo will lead the Post’s international advertising business in the Asia Pacific region and contribute to its international sales strategy.

Darryl’s appointment bolsters the SCMP’s focus in Southeast Asia and will lead collaborations with brands keen to engage with its global business audience. In his new role, Darryl will oversee implementing and managing the sales activities in the APAC region, identifying new business opportunities and defining strategies to generate new growth opportunities. He will oversee the regional sales office in Singapore and report directly to Romanus Ng, SVP of Advertising & Marketing Solutions.

With more than 12 years of advertising sales experience and holding strategic sales positions in digital, print and broadcast media outlets, Darryl was most recently the Sales Director at Inskin Media where he was responsible for driving commercial and revenue for the business in Asia. He has held senior managerial advertising sales roles at BBC Global News Limited, Pixels Asia & Gravity4, Sony Pictures Entertainment Networks Asia, SPH Magazines, in addition to stints at Discovery’s AFC Network and FOX Sports.

IAR Systems, the future-proof supplier of software tools and services for embedded development, announced the appointment of Kazuhisa Harabe as Country Manager for IAR Systems Japan.

Kiyofumi Uemura, who has served as Director for the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region and Country Manager for Japan since 2016, will continue to devote his efforts to business expansion as Director for the APAC region, which in addition to Japan also includes supporting the growing IAR Systems' offices in Taiwan, Mainland China and Korea.

Harabe joined IAR Systems in 2010 as an account sales representative and has contributed to business expansion and strengthened partnerships with semiconductor vendors in the fields of factory automation, medical equipment, and consumer products. Since 2018, he has been responsible for IAR Systems' sales in Japan and has been engaged in the reinforcement of marketing and cultivation of new markets, such as the Internet of Things and robotics. Prior to joining IAR Systems, he served in several roles in the IT industry, and after handling various corporate solution sales in the SoftBank Group and with foreign IT vendors as well as starting up new businesses, he gained further experience in consulting sales to support B2B sales and marketing process improvements and was involved in business organization innovations.

Tanla Platforms Limited, India's largest CPaaS provider, announced the appointment of Aravind Viswanathan as Chief Financial Officer effective 1st June 2021. Aravind joins the company from Wipro Limited, where he served as Senior Vice President and CFO – iDEAS Global Business Line.

Aravind's handling of finance and related functions is extensive and rich. He joins Tanla with nearly two decades' financial experience, all at Wipro Limited, a leading global information technology company listed in India and on NYSE with a market cap of over US$30 billion. He has handled pivotal roles across business finance, treasury, investor relations, financial planning and analysis, and audit. He brings in considerable experience in areas around client contract negotiation including innovative deal structuring, driving levers for superior operating margin, forecasting and planning, M&A business case preparation and integration, driving better cash flows, setting up strong processes and compliance, investor relations, and talent management.

Vietnam-based RedFOX Labs announce the appointment of Philip Cahiwat as its Head of Business Development for its venture-level company, RFOX Games.

RFOX Games is a wholly owned subsidiary of RedFOX Labs, the company behind KOGs - the number one selling NFT on the WAX platform.

RFOX Games has released a closed beta version of its game KOGs: SLAM!, a 100% on-chain, mobile blockchain-based game modeled on the 90's phenomenon POGs. The game is set to progress to open beta in the coming months, along with its marketplace and ahead of a series of interoperable games. Users can get started with their KOGs and join the global community via Discord where weekly sessions for updates and activities cater to the growing user base.