Kelvin Tan - Co-Founder & Chief Investment Officer, GTR Ventures

As Chief Investment Officer, Kelvin chairs the Investment Committee. He is responsible for the entire investment transaction life-cycle ranging from origination, to screening, negotiation, and exits.

To date, he has screened over 100 start-ups in the world of trade and supply chain finance, and closed 10 investment deals for the firm. He is also actively promoting existing portfolio companies by introducing them to new investors, profiling them, forging new alliances and co-creating new products. 

Previously, Kelvin served as Deputy Director at the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), where he worked closely with international organisations (i.e ICC, G20, Berne Union, FCI), corporates, banks, and fintechs, to enhance Singapore’s trade finance ecosystem as well as promote trade finance as an asset class. 

His coverage included a wide range of issues in the world of trade finance, focusing primarily on technology, data, digitalisation, and product innovation in areas such as supply chain finance, alternative lending, B2B payments, and procurement. Together with the IDA, he led efforts to create a proof-of-concept with DBS and Standard Chartered, for mitigation of multiple invoicing fraud on the blockchain. 

Passionate about improving SMEs’ access to finance, Kelvin actively sought to attract non-banking capital to Singapore, including trade finance funds. He also embarked on projects such as a global trade credit bureau, the ICC Trade Register, and a study on SMEs’ capital raising value chain, presented to the Singapore Capital Markets Committee. At the International Finance Corporation (IFC) – the private lending and investment arm of the World Bank Group, Kelvin served as Senior Investment Officer.


Rupert Sayer – Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, GTR Ventures

 

Rupert is CEO of GTR Ventures and works closely with Kelvin to source and screen potential investment targets. He is central to bridging GTR Ventures and the value proposition that it brings to trade-related start-ups and early stage platforms to GTR-Global Trade Review, the world’s leading trade, supply chain, commodity and export finance media company based in London, UK.

As a founder of GTR’s global media operations, Rupert has over 15 years’ experience within the emerging markets trade, commodity and export finance markets and has been based in Singapore for nine years. GTR publishes the market-leading publication GTR magazine, supplements and directories and also organises the biggest and most supported trade finance events in the world. The annual GTR Asia conference in Singapore is the world’s biggest trade finance gathering.
 

Opening the door to trade finance’s biggest global market community through GTR’s events and networking reach is a clear attraction and benefit for GTR Ventures’ partners and investee companies: an instant marketing and profiling boost within the very markets they strive to capture.

Before GTR and GTR Ventures, Rupert founded several trade-related and e-commerce journals. This followed a couple of years working as a parliamentary assistant in the UK’s House of Commons, as a research assistant in the European Parliament, and as research fellow at The Atlantic Council, Nato’s UK representative body.

Rupert has an MA in International Studies and a BA in International Relations & Strategic Studies.