Furhat is a social robot from Stockholm, Sweden. Designed to interact with humans in the same way we communicate with each other, by speaking, listening and maintaining eye contact. Furhat is being used across a wide variety of industries, including healthcare, education, tourism, recruitment and in research & innovation.
Furhat will lead the talk, together with Charlie Caper on stage, at The VoiceTech Summit Middle East to discuss how to create engaging and magical interactions with social robots.

Alan Cheah is the Country General Manager at Carsome Certified, Southeast Asia largest integrated car e-commerce platform. Tasked to expand the retail network in Malaysia, and create a seamless end-to-end user experience when it comes to purchasing cars.
Former Chief Executive Officer at GoCar Mobility, 2020 Frost & Sullivan Malaysia Car-Sharing Company of the Year, and was Chief Executive Officer at GoEVcharger, an E-Mobility Operator (EMO) to provide and operate the charging infrastructure for Electric Vehicles (EV).
As Chief Operations Officer from April 2016 to September 2017, paved the way for GoCar to be part of the alternative transportation ecosystem as a first-mile / last-mile solution by working with strategic partners and industry players to expand its location network in Klang Valley. This includes placing GoCars at Shell stations, major airports, LRT stations, KTMB stations, hotels, shopping malls, condominiums, office towers, and more.
Prior to this, was the Marketing Director at MaGIC that led, and strategized the digital roadmap to create regional awareness and engagement for MaGIC's brands, programs, and projects across the ASEAN region. Was also the lead digital strategist for MaGIC Accelerator Program Cohort 1, MaGIC Academy 2014 & 2015, and [email protected] Programs in partnership with Stanford University.

Ms Kwanchiva Thangthai is a Senior Researcher at NECTEC, Thailand. She is currently Involved in developing Thai Conversational User Interface Platform. PhD in Computer Science, University of East Anglia, UK.
9 years' experience in Thai speech recognition and 4 years' experience in audiovisual and lipreading technology.

Asst/Prof Sean Lam is an experienced data scientist, practitioner and academician with a PhD from the National University of Singapore, NUS. He has spent nearly 20 years in government, research, academic and healthcare organizations. He is currently the Head of Data Science with the SingHealth Health Services Research Centre, overseeing a team of data scientists in the development data science-related infrastructure, technologies, policies and processes for the enhancement of patient care and outcomes. He is also a faculty member with the Duke-NUS Medical School and the Singapore Management University.

Sourabh Gupta is Co-Founder and CEO at Vernacular.ai. This IIT Roorkee grad raised funds for his company when he was 23. He has played an important role in getting the first few customers on board to get Vernacular over $1mn ARR. As of today, he spends most of his time, solving product distribution problems, and taking the company globally.

Yew Wai is a tech enthusiast and passionate builder in South East Asia with a wide range of experiences & stints gained across various leading O2O platforms.
He is currently the VP of Product Strategy in OVO, Indonesia’s Leading Payments, Rewards and Financial Services platform; with a mission to drive financial inclusion in Indonesia.
His notable past experiences include Country Manager & founding member in Fave & KFIT Asia; regional business analyst in Groupon as well as management consulting in Ernst & Young.

Data Analytics executive specializing in Data Governance Strategy, Solutions Design and Architecture and Business Intelligence platforms in leading organizations to leverage data as an enterprise asset.
With proven track record in delivering strategic initiatives and profound experience in implementing end to end data lake/data warehouse with integration of data governance tool and business intelligence solutions using established and up-to-date technologies, and re-engineering operational processes.
Solid academic background who have a perfect balance of strong business acumen and solid foundation in information technology with exceptional leadership skills and ability to execute decisions.

Bret Kinsella is CEO and founder of Voicebot.ai, the leading source of research, data, analysis, and news related to the voice and AI industries. Bret was named Commentator of the Year by the Alexa Conference in 2019 and both Voice AI journalist of the Year and Commentator of the Year by Project Voice 2020. He frequently keynotes at technology conferences in the U.S. and Europe.
His Voice Insider newsletter has a select audience of industry leaders and often breaks news weeks before it becomes public. The Voicebot.ai website is the number one most consulted source of news around voice and AI technologies, and Voicebot Research is the most cited source of industry data by news media, academia, and industry professionals. Mr. Kinsella’s has also served as a guest columnist for Harvard Business Review, USA Today, and VentureBeat.
Kinsella is also a practitioner in voice strategy and voice app design for Fortune 500 companies and has in-depth experience with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple Siri. A past executive at Sapient and Accenture as well as technology startups, Kinsella earned degrees from UCLA and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and can be found most weekends running in the mountains.

Tomoharu Ito is a freelance programmer living in the Netherlands. Also Working as an Engineer with DigitalCube.Inc. His expertise is in Alexa skills development, Serverless based web services, and also good at Ruby on Rails based web service.
He is an active member of the Japanese-language AWS community and One of the originators of the Japanese Amazon Alexa community. He was a lead organizer for Alexa Day 2018,2019, the first major Alexa-dedicated event in Japan. Currently, Tomoharu holds study groups on Alexa and related topics in both Japan and the Netherlands. He helps moderate the Amazon Alexa Japan User Group (AAJUG), an online/offline user community and meetup group focused on conveying the enjoyment of Alexa and voice design.
Recently, He is also moderating VoiceLunchJP which is the branch of the VoiceLunch.
Alexa Champion(Asia region, 2017)
DigitalCube.Inc Engineer
Hacosco.Inc Product Manager
AAJUG (Amazon Alexa Japan User Group, Japan *Unofficial ) Organizer

Mr Ashish Kulkarni has Over 17 years of professional experience in banking with 14 years spent in different managerial roles in areas of digital transformation, customer service, portfolio management, sales and omni channel development for customer engagement. His recent roles and responsibilities have had a focus on building and delivering digital capabilities to achieve seamless omni-channel customer engagement through conversational AI platforms. At the moment, He is accountable for developing and enabling different capabilities in the area of conversational banking for Standard Chartered Bank

Aimi Nakajima is CEO and founder of VOICE ALE.Inc, the leading Voice UI/UX agency based in Tokyo, Japan.
She is exactly a voice enthusiast having a passion to enhance Voice User Experiences among consumers.
Aimi has designed and consulted Amazon Alexa Skills and Google Actions in many industries, as well as voice-enabled car navigation assistants.
One of her businesses is organizing VUI Design Sprint which totally supports marketing processes such as research, user interview, problem solving, prototyping, and user testing.
Her strength point is leading global communication.
She was selected as speaker of Voice Global 2020, exclusively from East Asia.
Also an initiator of Women in Voice Japan.

Yuka Matsuba is a VUI consultant living in Tokyo, Japan. Also working as a UX designer. Yuka supports the service design process totally, such as team building, research, data analysis, user interview, user observation, problem framing, ideation, prototyping, user testing, and so on.
She is enthusiastic about transfering the usefulness of Voice User Interface and the accurate knowledge of User Experience design.
Yuka has developed over 100 Alexa skills and won some prizes in some contests. She got the title of Alexa Champion in January, 2020.
Her expertise is in VUI design for providing pleasing voice experiences for consumers. She has consulted some voice services in some industries. Also Yuka published a book “VUI Design Guide Book” and a Udemy course “Introduction to UX Design”. Also she manages the website “Aoxa” and the mail magazine to transfer the information about VUX and UX Design.

Matt Ware's been around digital a long time; back before the Y2K bug was even a thing. Prior to becoming Head of Operations at First, Matt helped realise the value of digital at Sensis, News Ltd, Reed Business Information and Dynamic Creative.
For over 20 years Matt has worked in the fields of SEO, Performance Media, Social, Mobile and CRO with a specific focus on how to improve Customer Experience and Engagement using Data and Analytics.
Most recently Matt has started to explore the value of AI, Machine Learning and how Voice enabled devices can be used to interact with customers in real time to answer their questions and needs.
Some of the clients Matt has worked with include: Kmart, Target, Suncorp, AAMI, Officeworks, Flight Centre, Fairfax, TradeMe, BigW, Fiji Airways, UNSW, Dymocks, Grays Online, TAB and Qantas to name just a few.
Matt's relentless pursuit to know his clients and their competitors inside and out places him in a unique position to bring vital insight to First's clients.

Utsav is a dynamic and highly accomplished strategy leader, executive partner and business owner with a career track in enabling various companies in different verticals to enhance their AI/ML initiatives. At Shaip, Utsav Shah is responsible for growing and supporting companies willing to solve the most demanding AI challenges in the Middle East, APAC and Europe region. He is a finance professional turned entrepreneur and a strong believer in technology and data. He has broad experience of leading and expanding teams, partnerships, business models, go to market, etc. He is also a member of AI standardisation Committee at Niti Aayog. He is a regular speaker at various forums and events.
He is a chartered accountant and a commerce graduate. He was working with Deloitte before joining Shaip.

Dr. Tran Huy Dat is an expert in audio and speech technologies. He obtained his MSc degree from National Technical University of Ukraine “KPI” in 1995 and PhD degree from National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in 2000, both specialized in acoustic system and devices, respectively. From 2002 to 2005 he had been a postdoc fellow at Centre for Integrated Acoustic Information Research (CIAIR), Nagoya University Japan, working with world-renowned Prof. Fumitada Itakura. Since 2005, he has joined the Institute for Infocomm Research, A*STAR Singapore where he is currently holding a position of deputy head of Aural Intelligent Department and also head of Audio Analytic and Speech Recognition Group. As the technical leader and PI, Dr. Tran has been contributed to successful completions of many industrial projects in Singapore with public agencies and MNCs in the field of audio analytic and speech recognition. His developed technologies have been licensed to industries and start-ups. He and his team also topped in many international challenges including prestigious IARPA ASPiRE prized challenge in 2015 for reverberant speech recognition, NASA-UTD Fearless Step Challenge for speaker identification in 2019, SdSV Challenge for speaker verification in 2020, Singapore GovTech challenge on speech recognition engines in 2020. He was the leader of audio analytic module in MATAR robot, which won the GovInsider International Award for the best government robot and drone, in 2018. Dr. Tran is the author and co-authors of more than 80 international peer-reviewed papers and more than 50 technical disclosures and patents

Dr. Shuki Idan is the Director of Data Science of Agoda Services, part of Booking Holdings travel conglomerate. As part of his responsibilities, Dr. Idan leads data science teams across geographies with responsibility to personalization and optimization of user experiences, content curation (text, images), in-session recommendations, profiling and decision support on Agoda’s apps, websites and mobile web.
Prior to Agoda, Dr. Idan held leadership roles in SAP, Amdocs, Radvision, and the Israeli Defense Forces, as well as was involved in starting several companies and ventures. Among other, Dr. Idan is three times winner of the ACM KDD Cups for Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery. He is the author of many publications around harnessing AI to deliver optimal business solutions and was one of the main contributors to the ITU standards that are foundations to the Multimedia and VoIP applications we use today.

Chandra Surbhat (Chandra) is the Vice President & Global Head of Digital experience unit at Wipro, a group that focusses on transforming customer experiences and enterprise simplification.
A client focused visionary and experienced in “Digital” business, Chandra specializes in helping customers transform their business and win exponentially, by developing digital solutions to address technology disruptions through Design, Data / insights and engineering in consumer life cycle of lead generation to loyalty.
He is passionate about technology and works closely with customers, advisors, analysts, partners in driving transformation, and business outcomes for customers. He has been instrumental in bringing ‘experience’ at the core for many customers.
Chandra has spent time in diverse roles and instrumental in setting up & leading practices, building global teams and managing partner eco-system for business growth. Building Platforms, IP’s and industry solutions has been a key differentiator in all his roles.
Chandra is a frequent speaker at global conferences, thought leadership forums, CIO and NASSCOM events. He has led his teams to industry awards, innovation awards and analyst recognitions.
Chandra has done his executive business management from IIM Calcutta and a program management course from Stanford. He holds a Bachelors in Engineering and has been active to volunteer in various community initiatives and at Wipro Cares.

20+years in delivering technology-led sustained results across a wide range of industries including Food and beverages, Steel, Power, Media, Manufacturing, Public sector, and Defence. Hands-on experience in deploying ERP solutions, Mobile solutions, CRM, digital, and AI initiatives to help the enterprise achieve its business goals. Major skills and experience in business solutions and leading cross-functional teams to bring about fundamental change and improvement in strategy, process, and profitability – both as a leader and expert consultant.

Sangram Sabat is an entrepreneur, consultant and product/ops strategist. Sangram has led large scale AI projects in CPG, Telcos, and BFSI, over the past 7 years. He's making information and services accessible in native languages for digital inclusion, through Saarthi’s pioneering work in Conversational AI. Sangram believes Ambient Intelligence will soon dominate all interactions we have, and is purposefully advancing that vision through industry and academic collaborations.

Vishwanath is a DeepTech entrepreneur with a decade of academic and applied research experience in Computational Linguistics. Vishwanath has been a vocal champion of the new age conducive policies for Indic language & voice technology companies at various government, academia & industry think tanks. He's on a mission to enable uniform customer experience in every interaction through Saarthi's multilingual call centre AI agents deployed in contact centres across different verticals

Kulbir is an experienced leader with a track record of new product creation and strategic solution development for innovative healthcare technologies and consumer electronics products across Asia Pacific Japan region and Silicon Valley. Most recently, Kulbir was the Medtech Practice head for Life Sciences with A*STAR. Previously, he was the Sr.Director and Co-inventor at Earlens Corporation, where he led the team to develop the first cloud-connected photonic based hearing aid system. Kulbir also spent eleven years with St. Jude Medical (acquired by Abbott) in designing award winning fully connected Implantable ICDs, cardiac pacemakers and combination products. He is a co-author on more than 50 patents in healthcare and connected devices.

Susanna Dillenbeck is managing all the strategic accounts for Furhats commercial partners, both from client and development perspective, with the task to prove the commercial viability of the Furhat platform and grow the revenue stream from commercial applications.

A technical-creative thinker with 10 years of experience in the field of UX design, user research, and voice design in Belgium, UK, Australia, Hong Kong, and, to a limited extent, mainland China, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia.
Currently an executive MBA student at the University of Cambridge and working as the global design lead for conversational banking at HSBC, based in Hong Kong.